[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#962267: Bug#962267: Bug#962267: xen: please consider to not install NEWS into runtime library packages

[Ansgar]

Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
> On 6/5/20 1:34 PM, Ansgar wrote:
> > On Fri, 2020-06-05 at 12:09 +0200, Hans van Kranenburg wrote:
> > > > Installing NEWS into xen*, but not libxen* probably still
> > > > reaches all
> > > > relevant users.
> > > 
> > > Yes, that makes sense.
> > > 
> > > OTOH, what if there was a really weird problem with
> > > libxenmisc4.11 that
> > > we would like to pro-actively inform users about?
> > 
> > In that case shipping NEWS in libxen* would of course be fine in my
> > opinion even if it also includes some additional information that
> > might
> > only be relevant to users of the other NEWS files.
> > 
> > > I guess there is only one NEWS per source package?
> > 
> > You can have `debian/<package>.NEWS` for per-binary NEWS when using
> > `dh_installchangelogs` or install them in some other way. But it
> > increases overhead and I would personally avoid having per-binary
> > NEWS
> > for this reason.
> 
> Can you help me by explaining me what your current expectations
> regarding this issue are? You ask for not having NEWS in specific
> binary packages, but then subsequently explain that you'd prefer to
> avoid doing exactly that.

Just include NEWS in relevant packages, not in all; in particular not
in lib*.  That doesn't require per-binary NEWS as only one identical
NEWS file exists.

I don't think it is necessary to worry about the hypothetical case of
having to inform *all* admins of system that have libxenmisc*
installed, but aren't actually using Xen at all, like say every user of
qmeu (not all qemu users use Xen, even though qemu-system-x86 links to
libxenmisc*).

> Adding information to NEWS is quite an exceptional thing to happen.
> It's only used for cases in which the user needs to take actions or
> needs to be aware of a real problem that needs to be solved outside
> of the context of what we can do in the packaging and Debian. My
> opinion is that adding the extra complexity is not warranted to fix
> the accidental annoyance of pressing a key on the keyboard for a user
> who chooses to install apt-listchanges.

As Debian build packages generally enabling most compile-time options,
many packages end up linked to shared libraries that provide functions
not used at all.  Users generally don't need to take any action just
because a package has optional support for Xen and one shouldn't annoy
users in this case: it only results in apt-listchanges getting less
useful as it notifies about irrelevant stuff.

Debian should try to be user-friendly and only inform users of relevant
changes with the NEWS files.  Here this can be easily achieved by
shipping NEWS.Debian only in xen-utils-common or so (and not in
libxen*).

Ansgar