Lack of update information

[Rahul Sundaram]

Chris Weyl wrote:

> 
> It's hardly a "small additional cost", especially when looked at in
> aggregate; this would be an additional non-automateable step required
> for every update release that is of very questionable value/utility to
> the vast majority of our users.  

I wouldn't say that. Currently it is of questionable value currently but 
it would be much more valuable without just version bumping and more 
careful thought put into justifying the need for updates. Every update 
adds to a large cost in terms of build time, bandwidth, potential 
regressions etc.

I realize it would make your life
> easier, but is it worth an additional imposition on our already
> highly-regulated maintainers just to make your life easier? 

This is hardly about just me. I am not the only user on low bandwidth 
connections at times. Many regions of the world are as you can see from 
the number of people agreeing with the general idea.

> Basically, this seems to be "I don't really trust the package
> maintainer's decision on why I should upgrade, so I want to know what
> changes this introduces."  

There are other considerations including but not limited to bandwidth 
and yes, the criteria that users choose for consuming updates can be 
quite different from the maintainer's reason for pushing the update and 
without the maintainers informing me of why they decided to do a push, 
users can't arbitrate their decisions either.

This step requires human intelligence and cannot be automated 
completely. You will have to take into account not only things like 
upstream changelogs (names,location etc differ widely and may not even 
be provided) but also downstream patches, downstream bugs filed that are 
being fixed by a particular update, CVE information for security updates
and much more information that a package maintainer would know about and 
is very valuable to be passed on to end users.  Some portions which can 
be automated, already are, such as bodhi closing updates optionally if 
the bug numbers are specified.

Rahul