apt-listbugs, apt-listchanges AND other thoughts

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 06:13:18PM +0800, Tim Webster wrote:

> The three best packages in debian are
> [...]
> apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges
> I use these to decide whether to install a package or place it on hold.
> 
> Please include apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges by default in ubuntu
> I just feel unsafe without them.

Thanks. :-)  However, it's not clear that tools like these are appropriate
for the default installation.

In the case of apt-listbugs, it has no way of accessing the Ubuntu bug
tracking system, nor much of a chance at determining whether a bug affects
an Ubuntu package or not.

apt-listchanges works equally well with Debian and Ubuntu packages, but I
don't think that any of the existing frontends are sufficiently intuitive or
unintrusive enough to be inserted into the default upgrade process.

We would certainly like to have a facility for displaying changes on
upgrades, but the existing tools don't (yet) integrate well with the
desktop, and could be very confusing for inexperienced console users as well
(being dumped into a pager unexpectedly).

Let's revisit this idea after the release and decide on a good long-term,
well-integrated solution.

> Thoughts about Gentoo like initscript dependences?  If I decided not to
> start an initscript there is not much point wasting time even trying
> initscripts which depend on it. Also if  all the dependences of an
> initscript have been started why wait for other initscripts to start.
> Hopefully this "parallel starting of init scripts can get my system up
> faster".

This is something we plan to explore for a future release.  It may not make
the final list for Hoary, but we'll see when the time comes.

-- 
 - mdz