[Haskell-cafe] changelogs for packages on Hackage

[Valery V. Vorotyntsev]

> Valery V. Vorotyntsev wrote:
>
>> It would be nice if Hackage displayed ``recent changes'' of a package.
>> [severity: wishlist]
>>
>> You see, I am subscribed to the ``hackage - recent additions'' feed
>> [http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/recent.rss] and receive
>> entries that look like this:
>>
>>     Cabal 1.8.0.2
>>     Added by DuncanCoutts, Wed Dec 16 04:19:24 UTC 2009.
>>     A framework for packaging Haskell software
>>
>> This is sweet.  But how can I tell what's new in Cabal since 1.6.0.3?
>> (`Cabal' is just an example here.)


Duncan Coutts <duncan.coutts at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Yep it's a fair point.
>
> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/299
>
> Some packages have a changelog file in them that we could display,
> though most don't. For those that do have a changelog, how we avoid
> displaying all of history is a bit tricky. For those that do not,
> ideally we could derive a changelog by looking at the difference in the
> API. The latter requires a tool we've not written yet.


We could mimic Debian's approach.

Debian policy requires changelogs of standard format. [1]

These changelogs are updated with debchange(1) tool and can be parsed
with parsechangelog(1p). [2,3]

See example. [4]

  [1] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html#s-dpkgchangelog
  [2] http://manpages.debian.net/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=debchange
  [3] http://manpages.debian.net/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=parsechangelog
  [4] http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/x/xterm/current/changelog

-- 
vvv