Draft: simple update description guidelines

[Richard Hughes]

On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 09:06 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > The following are a set of simple guidelines for the update descriptions 
> > via bodhi (which is used by PackageKit to inform users of what has 
> > changed). These guidelines are intended to help end users understand the 
> > nature of changes in the update better. Bodhi is not used in rawhide, so 
> > these guidelines are not applicable for rawhide updates. Note that this 
> > is not connected to the rpm changelog.
> -1, simply nuts

By saying "simply nuts" I assume you've not talked to any real users.

This IS useful:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/hwdata-0.222-1.fc10

This IS NOT useful:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/gromacs-4.0.3-2.fc10

If we want to push our platform forward as "easy to use" and "suitable
for new users" then this sort of thing is very important. Users are not
typically on the upstream mailing lists, so then they don't know if
"Update to 4.0.3" will fix:

- data corruption when saving to foolib format
- that annoying memory leak that means you don't have to restart anymore
- now you can export to fooapp 2.1 format
- trivial icon corruption that you are not that bothered about

So when the user looks at the update description, they make a decision
"do I download this and install it" -- and for that they need to have
some data to make an informed decision.

Richard.