Not installing changelogs in 11.04

[Gerfried Fuchs]

        Hello there!

* Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> [2010-11-09 10:33:19 CET]:
> first, some rationale for this change: there is a continuous demand
> for downsizing both our installation media, as well as the install
> footprint. So we keep looking for packages which we should eliminate
> (duplicate libraries, unnecessary runtimes like our current effort to
> eliminate perl (-modules, not -base), but also for stuff that users
> generally don't need. IMO package changelogs very much fall into the
> latter category, so they were very high on the "first against the
> wall" list. When we need to remove things from the CDs, we should
> start with the bits that are least missed by users.

 Right, the question is wether it would make sense to remove them from
the CD only. On the other hand, that would create different packages
from different installation areas, thus resulting in quite some
confusion. From what I calculated, 25 mb were thrown around, which would
be a bit more than 3% of a regular CD size - are these numbers correct?
Is this difference worth the confusion?

> Changelogs are of course a valuable developer tool, but do we really
> care that much about having them available locally? Personally I think
> that an 
>   apt-changelog gnome-panel
> is not much harder than
>   zless /usr/share/doc/gnome-panel/changelog.Debian.gz

 This apt-changelog utility sounds quite helfpul. Is this going to get
into the regular apt-utils package (within Debian) too? Actually
aptitude changelog gnome-panel already works, but having another tool
that better fits your workflow might be convenient.

 Also the thing here is, it creates a first case that external packagers
might adopt - and then end with no changelogs at all because the tools
won't know where to fetch them from? Is support or documentation for
them available how to hook into apt-changelog, in case they'd like to
adopt the no-changelog approach?

> and we have extra features on top of that, such as being able to
> retrieve the changelog for uninstalled packages, or for older/newer
> versions than the installed one.

 I take it the approach would take the installed package version for
downloading as basis, and would be possible to work with branches that
are made through releases (like for SRU, backports and the likes)? Just
want to throw these points in as reminder for having it covered
properly, otherwise people will start to complain rightfully.

> Also, of course the source packages have debian/changelog, for
> developers who actually want to work on a package. These are
> automatically mirrored to changelogs.ubuntu.com, and that's where
> update-manager fetches them from when you install updates and it
> displays what changes you are about to get.

 Right, just wanted to mention that they are also properly linked on
packages.ubuntu.com

>  * It's important information for developers which needs to be easily
>    accessible. I believe this is sufficiently mitigated by
>    apt-changelog.

 I don't believe that the information is "developers" only, that's my
concerns. Actually some developers might start to put more and more
information into the NEWS.Debian files so that they are reaching the
users.

> Matt Zimmerman [2010-11-08 12:47 +0000]:
> > 1. (mainly Zack and Didier) Removing the changelogs is seen as
> > removing attribution for the work of Debian developers.
> 
> I've seen that in the IRC log as well, but we are just changing the
> "access method" to the changelog, not the changelog itself. It's not
> intended to change/remove any attribution here. Didier, can you please
> elaborate why you think that would be the case?

 One thing to keep in mind here is that not everyone has network access.
Especially with CDs as installation media people are choosing that path
to be able to install it on machines without network access. Given that
it then requires network access to get the changelog is fighting against
support for that environment.

> If that's generally seen as a blocker from Debian, we can always
> revert that, and cut some other feature instead; there's still plenty
> of other bits, such as dropping Evolution contacts sync, or making
> Yelp non-accesible by building it against webkit (and thus dropping
> xulrunner), or dropping the last remainders of non-English language
> support (which shrinks and shrinks each release anyway). IMHO all
> of those are more important than package changelogs; other people
> might disagree of course.

 The thing here is really that it might seem to call for a different
approach to handle different installation media. If the place on a CD
gets short I can totally relate to that feeling (given that I'm also
involved in grml where we have discussions at each release what we could
cut down), but cutting on package included documentation never was a
topic here.

> > 2. (mainly Gerfried and Colin) Removing the changelogs takes away an
> > important information resource from users, though this is mitigated by
> > providing a tool for downloading the changelogs on demand.
> 
> See above, with apt-changelog it should be sufficiently easy to get
> them. Fixing apt-listchanges is also on my TODO list.

 See above, network access is not always available. And would
apt-changelog offer a possibility to call it on a networked computer to
download them all and transfer them through usb stick to a system to
store them in their expected place? Would apt-changelog actually store
the changelog in the expected place?

> > A. Rather than removing the changelog entirely, strip it down to the most
> > recent entries (e.g. the current release cycle).  A quick estimate suggests
> > that this would eliminate 95% of the changelog, but would still attribute
> > recent work.  This doesn't address Colin's concern.
> 
> I could live with this compromise, but I actually think it would
> create more confusion than it would help. You still need a way to see
> the complete changelog.

 Right, but then one has a clear pointer in the file where to get the
complete changelog from. Colin's got a point here. :)

 Thanks,
Rhonda
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