Task:Providing changes since last version of a package

Background

For the Application manager and downloads.maemo.org it would be nice to have automatically updated information about changes since last version of a package. It would be good to have the change information available inside a package.

Problems

debian package changelog

The debian package changelog describes changed to the package made by the package maintainer. If maintainer and developer are different a changelog entry for a major relase could just contain "New upstream version".

ChangeLog

Another option would be to use the ChangeLog of the original source package - this would contain upstream documentation to changes in the original software. You would expect to find new features there. However upstream information might contain information of varying detail. Another problem is that the ChangeLog is "owned" by upstream, the maintainer can/should not change it.

Proposed solutions

XML file

Add a Maemo specific XML file for each package.

An example:

<maemo-release-changelog>
<revision release-date="2008-07-07 23:05:00" revision="<package revision>">
  <description>
    Packages new upstream version.
  </description>
</revision>
<release release-date="2008-07-01 11:55:00" version="<source package version>">
  <description>
    Now plays funny sound on start.
  </description>
</release>
</maemo-release-changelog>

When the XML file isn't found, fallback to ChangeLog and changelog. [Proposed by Tim Teulings]

Additional header in debian/control

I wonder whether another header would be sufficient in debian/control? We've already got XB-Maemo-Icon, adding XBS-Version-Changes or something could be sufficient.

Certainly for downloads.maemo.org; for more detail the debian/changelog is available and /should/ be the definitive location so we don't diverge too much from other Debian-based systems. --User:jaffa