Hi,

I do not known if this is the right list to address this, if it has been already
discussed and so it can be considered as noise. ;-)

Packages may provide a NEWS (or any other name, compressed or not, etc.) file that may be part of the «main» package (like in hwloc vs. libhwloc15 for src:hwloc) or in a library package (like in the libpipewire-0.3-0 vs. pipewire/pipewire-bin for src:pipewire).

But as a user is there an uniform / easy (whatever its place and name) to read it? Like:

- using the command line (apt news ... or dpkg .., etc.),
- or/and by a link in the Debian PTS for instance.

Should this then be entered for the build?
Or using some other data resource using a website or UDD content?
By this last question, I have in mind some remarks in the uscan version 5 discussion.

Many thanks,
Patrice

Note that:
1. I did not look at the Debian Policy Manual if there is a point on that and so
if it may be «randomly» placed by the maintainer(s). It is not really my point here.
2. It exists apt-listchanges but it do not answer the need here, exact?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 2021-12-13 at 19:55 +0100, Patrice Duroux wrote:

Packages may provide a NEWS (or any other name, compressed or not, etc.) file

Since that is an upstream file, it is not standard across all Debian
package upstreams, including the name, file type and contents.

Different subsets of packages have a standard for it (like all GNU
packages). Different subsets of packages might use a common name for it
like NEWS or ChangeLog or CHANGES.md, but some of those could be for
VCS commit logs so you can't automatically tell which is which. Other
packages might use entirely unique names for the file. Some packages
might even have one file per upstream version.

as a user is there an uniform / easy (whatever its place and name) to read it?

Given the above constraint, the answer has to be no, until Debian
invents a new mechanism to have the package maintainer designate which
file in the package contains the release notes. That is likely to be a
lot of work for all of Debian to switch to, so the transition would
take a long time and probably never be complete.

I note that there is a ChangeLog field in DEP-8 but it is not defined
which kind of change log (commit log or release notes) it contains.
Also it contains a URL not the filename in the package.

2. It exists apt-listchanges but it do not answer the need here, exact?

It shows the NEWS.Debian but not the upstream NEWS file.

--
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQIzBAABCgAdFiEEYQsotVz8/kXqG1Y7MRa6Xp/6aaMFAmG4GygACgkQMRa6Xp/6 aaNE2BAAqMZurSJXlN3Y+2zMu4ou2GGCKuC9iAM7tcTXBYxN+/9/+W5uJ6+FkRlV YlJy2Q5ul6h+4kOYXOOyJ8tX1hwEv4135C5vgIhKS8U/TYqjCbbFjWosxvPd62KO zDBeLV83PE0pQparwwlZv7hu8zsQhkh253jCqJ1QmdFBw7Ljc0TZUQwrSt8wAn+h GIvDpaPPGmRxK5BClyCao00F7BerpEVCgPP2ulKsE7m2iPYWzkkPJAl7RMeoDkgF qTewLJ0z2ESsYSJs7OOkSmla4z7ohASJvNxgfSmnZBa3b2BMuSrPjIXXSQJdh7ab goGSbmId9pI4qDx8z2/gjmTnzocs8H7TVWoUqz7RHm24S0btEID0f+9U8+XAAwoz wjbaq70dBrb/EUNpJh7i1snTqUyDQs95+960fyryvA+bdJfFVLMwmXcTGwGExESa n6QRY4gbDWuo8P2GIm/O8yNge/2dHFJVOvhpjX0c31Yv5rW2DQhHFpZUyKRzbuA+ VBB3TpwJ34xSb1hJrLfCX73am4RPh0A2YTMoPiea6M1fo7DnmVTZ8SfHI4InblZ5 rRhblFq1zDtCXy8TLOvk32BPUK4wpbR8T6eANIYYRna7l0Z5nK2sCw+btKORyuMW RHjsVG3cVqmuaeYHwBJBYKo/VB1AnpPxRk/054ZvoTRAFZQ637c=
=pn7u
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi,

So maybe too much ambitious but let's see what I can get regarding what is actually available in Debian and if I can dress something up at least like a new
track for Debian QA in a similar section to https://trends.debian.net/ while also providing a command line tool to get this NEWS content about a package (whatever if it the one providing this content or a «relative», based on the same source package).
Of course, result will probably only be an approximation.

Thanks,
Patrice

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wed, 15 Dec 2021 20:00:41 +0100, Patrice Duroux wrote:

So maybe too much ambitious but let's see what I can get regarding what is actually available in Debian and if I can dress something up at least like a new
track for Debian QA in a similar section to https://trends.debian.net/ while also providing a command line tool to get this NEWS content about a package (whatever if it the one providing this content or a «relative», based on the same source package).

I'm not sure what you are really after, but maybe this helps:
grml's zsh config has a nice function dneews:

% which dnews
dnews () {
emulate -L zsh
if [[ -r /usr/share/doc/$1/NEWS.Debian.gz ]]
then
$PAGER /usr/share/doc/$1/NEWS.Debian.gz
else
if [[ -r /usr/share/doc/$1/NEWS.gz ]]
then
$PAGER /usr/share/doc/$1/NEWS.gz
else
echo "No NEWS file for package $1 found, sorry."
return 1
fi
fi
}


Cheers,
gregor

--
.''`. https://info.comodo.priv.at -- Debian Developer https://www.debian.org
: :' : OpenPGP fingerprint D1E1 316E 93A7 60A8 104D 85FA BB3A 6801 8649 AA06
`. `' Member VIBE!AT & SPI Inc. -- Supporter Free Software Foundation Europe
`- NP: Rigmor Gustafsson: Is It A Crime

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQKTBAEBCgB9FiEE0eExbpOnYKgQTYX6uzpoAYZJqgYFAmG71ABfFIAAAAAALgAo aXNzdWVyLWZwckBub3RhdGlvbnMub3BlbnBncC5maWZ0aGhvcnNlbWFuLm5ldEQx RTEzMTZFOTNBNzYwQTgxMDREODVGQUJCM0E2ODAxODY0OUFBMDYACgkQuzpoAYZJ qgY//g//WHomrn07BzhennpDZ54q1kZSOVyie9J9BeGgIakrR3P2RyV35lzK5aSU JyZ8kB/PH26PWwwHSWRpysOW9t2SixbbyYYtE7xtzBdS1oXWvAND1WgCoVpueI4B odb3nHAgnnpF2PxX1H9/s9N/oi21TCNv8mnbe9n/obdW3VxJmeyas/7QsOLSmgM+ srKdAC7rCmGMLDAroOowujqt0+h0ZOgCaE5rooQVD4oYgULTsWOsEyYLoOCEHvUo XlDIuZDU3Pw6AZZ1Yq72PQTK7E/dlPVl8yMeeMAW6kETynCzae4O1V9hNVEMwsqM s/JGG1LFIs7p0F0LLZoCFsxtecFmW6e/Kl8RhqFtk9V7dnh0xNcRs/QidY+tIdVt 1VQBCYl7mSL44yukkzEHh6SRsKR02fySjiIRNzYZzpS/Zrnh5vCiUaZV8Ol4fStr ++ssVHt31aNSny9jf9/zywAhO6A+1Elj1lvDKT

Hi Gregor,

Yes that is part of my concern target but I trying also to find out more candidate contents among the package files or may be to design a remote resource
for that so it would be possible to extend 'dnews' if-else-cases with one that would be to display the output of an URL base on the package name for instance.

First I have build a script that tries to picture the situation in Debian based on some parameters (here release="sid" and archs="all amd64"):

changelog=30189
NEWS=2409
other=12799
changelog.Debian=59702
missing=5374
debs=65076
udebs=400
packages=65606
sources=34266
projects=33479

My terminology is somewhat approximate but I hope it is quite clear:
a project may have different (version) sources at a same time (think of mariadb 10.5 and 10.6 for instance), a source gives one or more packages, one package may be a udeb or a deb, etc.
Then 'changelog.Debian' shows the count of (debs) having a u/s/d/<pkg>/changelog.Debian.gz or in absent a doc/<pkg>/changelog.gz that is supposed to be its equivalent (for some Debian-specific source packages). Similarly 'NEWS' is the count of the packages having a u/s/d/<pkg>/NEWS.gs and finally 'changelog' is the count of the packages having a u/s/d/<pkg>/changelog.gz
'other' are possible interesting files to look into.

'missing' are packages not in 'changelog.Debian' like 'xvile' package for instance:
$ apt-file list xvile
xvile: /etc/X11/app-defaults/UXVile
xvile: /etc/X11/app-defaults/XVile
xvile: /usr/bin/uxvile
xvile: /usr/bin/xvile
xvile: /usr/share/applications/uxvile.desktop
xvile: /usr/share/applications/xvile.desktop
xvile: /usr/share/doc/xvile
xvile: /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/vile.png
xvile: /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/vile.svg
xvile: /usr/share/man/man1/uxvile.1.gz
xvile: /usr/share/man/man1/xvile.1.gz
xvile: /usr/share/pixmaps/vile.xpm
xvile: /usr/share/vile/vilemenu.rc
xvile: /usr/share/vile/xshell.sh

The script is currently also detecting some «collision» cases that may be interesting to check in case of there is an underlying packaging issue to be reported but I think that this is already handled, right?

jtreg: /usr/share/doc/jtreg/tag-spec.html
jtreg6: /usr/share/doc/jtreg/tag-spec.html
jtreg: /usr/share/doc/jtreg/usage.txt.gz
jtreg6: /usr/share/doc/jtreg/usage.txt.gz
libboost1.71-doc: /usr/share/doc/libboost-doc/doc
libboost1.74-doc: /usr/share/doc/libboost-doc/doc
libboost1.71-doc: /usr/share/doc/libboost-doc/examples
libboost1.74-doc: /usr/share/doc/libboost-doc/examples
python3-hug: /usr/share/doc/python3-hug/ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md
python3-hug-doc: /usr/share/doc/python3-hug/ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md
python3-hug: /usr/share/doc/python3-hug/ARCHITECTURE.md.gz
python3-hug-doc: /usr/share/doc/python3-hug/ARCHITECTURE.md.gz
python3-hug: /usr/share/doc/python3-hug/EXTENDING.md
python3-hug-doc: /usr/share/doc/python3-hug/EXTENDING.md
python3-hug: /usr/share/doc/python3-hug/README.md.gz
python3-hug-doc: /usr/share/doc/python3-hug/README.md.gz
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/DBus-interface.gz
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/DBus-interface.gz
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/FAQ.gz
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/FAQ.gz
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/README.Debian
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/README.Debian
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/changelog.Debian.gz
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/changelog.Debian.gz
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/changelog.archive.gz dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/changelog.archive.gz dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/changelog.gz
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/changelog.gz
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/copyright
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/copyright
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/doc.html
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/doc.html
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/examples/dnsmasq.conf.example dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/examples/dnsmasq.conf.example dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/setup.html
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/setup.html
dnsmasq-base: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/systemd_howto.gz
dnsmasq-base-lua: /usr/share/doc/dnsmasq-base/systemd_howto.gz kconfig-frontends: /usr/share/doc/kconfig-frontends/kconfig-language.txt.gz kconfig-frontends-nox: /usr/share/doc/kconfig-frontends/kconfig-language.txt.gz kconfig-frontends: /usr/share/doc/kconfig-frontends/kconfig.txt.gz kconfig-frontends-nox: /usr/share/doc/kconfig-frontends/kconfig.txt.gz


Best,
Patrice

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)