tool for getting changes between versions of a package

[Scott Moser]

On Fri, 24 Sep 2010, Kate Stewart wrote:

> On Thu, 2010-09-23 at 09:31 -0400, Scott Moser wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >    I've got a need to generate a list of changes from manifest 'A' to
> > manifest 'B'.  I know the release for the manifest, and that it contains
> > only packages in main, -updates, -security, and universe.  The manifests looks like:
> >    adduser 3.112ubuntu1
> >    apparmor 2.5-0ubuntu3
> >    apparmor-utils 2.5-0ubuntu3
> >    apport 1.13.3-0ubuntu2
> >    apport-symptoms 0.9
> >    apt 0.7.25.3ubuntu9.3
> >
> >    I'm hoping to go through each entry in 'A', and if it is changed in 'B'
> > to get the changes that were done between those two versions.  Ideally I
> > can get bug numbers where they appear in the changelog also.
> >
> >    It seems like something that might have already been done, but I'm not
> > aware of it.  Anyone have something like this ? Or, failing that,
> > suggestions on "best way to do it"?
>
> Heya Scott,
>    Have you seen the report that Bryce put together for X-org?
> http://www2.bryceharrington.org:8080/X/Reports/ubuntu-x-swat/versions-current.html
>
> Is it similar to what you're looking for?   Have you come across the
> arsenal project yet?  see: https://edge.launchpad.net/arsenal
>
> At any rate,  I'm very interested this area,  as is Jamie Bennett.  Let
> us know if you want to get together for some brainstorming.

I just pushed what is basically an initial working version to
lp:~smoser/+junk/mfdiff.trunk .  The output isn't terribly pretty, but it
basically
 - walks two manifests (format like above)
 - prints out which packages were added, and which were removed
 - for packages that differed, downloads their changelogs
   and prints out the relevant changelog blocks.

the end goal is to get as close as possible to generating a email like
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-cloud/2010-September/000268.html

I generated the above by hand, and that is error prone, and doesn't have
as much info as I'd like.  Ideally, bug references would be links, CVEs
would be highlighted ...

Scott