Lack of change description on update-manager

[Carlos Ribeiro]

Hello all,

I recently noticed that it's relatively common for update packages to have
no mention about what's changed when a new package version is released.
Tonight, before updating my Dapper box, I tried to check the state of the
three packages that were offered to me as upgrade. They are:

1) xinit (1.0.1-0ubuntu3.1)
2) wine (0.9.23~winehq0~ubuntu~6.06-1)
3) libwine (0.9.23~winehq0~ubuntu~6.06-1)

There are no "changed" information for all three packages, as presented by
the update-manager application. I believe this is not what is supposed to be
happening. As it stands, I'm left to peruse the original sites (where new
versions are supposedly deployed) to check what's new. However this will not
help, because the change may be limited to the packaged version (example: a
new compile with different options); or worse, Ubuntu version may have
applied just a bunch of patches, and it will not be fully in sync with the
latest version from the original developer.

As a user, I would ask developers & packagers to alwasy provide the
"changed" information for all packages that are updated. I know that it's
something difficult to do, and that it involves a lot of work; but it's
something that makes a lot of difference, because I have now to update
packages as a matter of trust, without knowing what was really changed.

Thanks for all the attention,

-- 
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/attachments/20061017/0ddee501/attachment.htm