Comment 1 Andre Klapper 2008-11-01 23:54:16 UTC

> (See Ubuntu's update manager for good example)
Can you attach an example screenshot here?

Created an attachment (id=1025) [details]
Picture of Ubuntu's update manager

Comment 3 Ryan Abel 2008-11-03 01:14:18 UTC

This is really a maintainer issue. Maintainers can define a
Maemo-Upgrade-Description field to provide a changelog during updates, but most
don't, unfortunately.

I guess the other option is using the .deb changelog, but those are rarely
suitable for end-user consumption.

This is probably WONTFIX or WORKSFORME.

What about software you haven't installed?

I was playing with the Maemo-Upgrade-Description flag, and it only works when
you have the application installed and there's a update to it in the updates
view (the app needs be in a repository too, with a .deb file it doesn't work).

Sometimes you want know if an application has the feature you needed, but you
uninstalled the application (to save space) until this feature not was
implemented.

Synaptic and Update Manager get the changelog information from the servers
(bugs.debian.net, launchpad.net, etc.). 
A similar thing could be done to the Hildon Application Manager getting the
info from the maemo.org downloads, as the awesome plan what Ryan has done in
https://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Improving_the_Application_manager#Integrations_with_Downloads
The developers would have to update the info in the downloads page, but it
seems a good practice and the most important projects there has this info.

Comment 5 Ryan Abel 2008-11-23 01:03:50 UTC

(In reply to comment #4)
> Synaptic and Update Manager get the changelog information from the servers
> (bugs.debian.net, launchpad.net, etc.). 
> A similar thing could be done to the Hildon Application Manager getting the
> info from the maemo.org downloads, as the awesome plan what Ryan has done in
> https://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Improving_the_Application_manager#Integrations_with_Downloads
> The developers would have to update the info in the downloads page, but it
> seems a good practice and the most important projects there has this info.
> 

Actually, I think this view (with some tabs along the top)
http://wiki.maemo.org/Image:Application-view-mockup.png is probably the best
place to stick a full change history.

Comment 6 Andre Klapper 2009-06-15 13:08:36 UTC

General information: The current code (for Fremantle) is available at
http://gitorious.org/hildon-application-manager/mainline/trees/master .
For information about the Fremantle beta SDK see
http://maemo.org/development/sdks/maemo_5-0_installation/

Yeah, it would definitely be nice to have a tab (in the Application Manager
details of a package) about the upgrade. debian/changelog is the correct place
to get the information.

(In reply to comment #3)
> This is really a maintainer issue. Maintainers can define a
> Maemo-Upgrade-Description field to provide a changelog during updates, but most
> don't, unfortunately.
> 
> I guess the other option is using the .deb changelog, but those are rarely
> suitable for end-user consumption.
> 
> This is probably WONTFIX or WORKSFORME.

I wasn't even aware of that field, and at one point i wallowed through all the
documentation i could find on m.o on packaging. Maybe it's there, somewhere,
but...

why not make use of the changelog? It's already a required part of package
maintenance that every debian maintainer is familiar with.

I know *i'd* like to be able to see the changelog when a new app update pops
up, and it would really reduce some noise on t.m.o during updates, too.

Yes, it would only help if the maintainer actually made the changelog
description meaningful and useful, but that's outside the scope of this,
anyway. :D

Comment 9 Neil MacLeod 2010-01-11 21:39:23 UTC

Change logs are just good practice. If a developer doesn't know what they've
modified in a release - or is incapable of documenting changes from one release
to another - then I would actually be inclined to steer clear of that
developers work (this applies to Nokia application & system releases, too!) :)

(In reply to comment #9)
> Change logs are just good practice. If a developer doesn't know what they've
> modified in a release - or is incapable of documenting changes from one release
> to another - then I would actually be inclined to steer clear of that
> developers work (this applies to Nokia application & system releases, too!) :)

I don't know for Maemo, but in Debian we are supposed to document every change
made to the package in debian/changelog. It's not just good practice, it's
policy.

And we do trust developers (all in all, it does work fine) to do that, if
there's no trust, there are part I'm more afraid than changelogs, to be honest.

(In reply to comment #3)
> This is really a maintainer issue. Maintainers can define a
> Maemo-Upgrade-Description field to provide a changelog during updates, but most
> don't, unfortunately.

I guess this isn't even implemented in HAM for Fremantle. I defined the field
in my control file and nothing happened when updating from HAM from the repo.

Can we please have a way to communicate update news to our users?

Talk thread regarding this topic: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=486289

Comment 13 Andre Klapper 2012-03-24 11:45:08 UTC

The Maemo 5 User Interface and Maemo 5 platform components (e.g. libraries)
used for the N900 are considered stable by Nokia and it seems that there are no
plans for official updates currently, hence nobody plans to work on this
enhancement/wishlist request. 
(And in case you feel like discussing this situation: Nokia Customer Care or
http://talk.maemo.org would be the place to do so as you will not reach Nokia
officials in this community bugtracker - though all of this is really no news.)

Reflecting this status by setting RESOLVED WONTFIX for this
enhancement/wishlist request (see
https://bugs.maemo.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status for status explanations).

There is a small chance for issues in those Maemo components that are open
source: Contributed patches could be included and made available in the Maemo 5
Community CSSU updates. 
The Maemo CSSU project is run by a small team of volunteers; see
http://wiki.maemo.org/CSSU for more information.
So in case that you can provide a patch that fixes the reported problem, please
feel encouraged to file a request under
https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Maemo%205%20Community%20SSU .
Please note: The Maemo CSSU project is not related in any way to Nokia.


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