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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Update Manager downloaded changelogs - how to view from command line



snorbert
May 25th, 2011, 08:04 AM
Hi folks,
Is it possible to download from the command line the same changelogs that Update Manager downloads for pending updates?

I have already tried apt-listchanges, but it doesn't give quite the same output as Update Manager does for the same package - Update Manager has something useful for ordinary people at the beginning of the changelog. For example, Update Manager has this to say at the beginning of the chromium-browser changelog:

Version 10.0.648.205~r81283-0ubuntu0.10.10.1:
With this version (like with 10.0.648.204), you may notice that the saved
passwords are no longer accessible in Chromium. (LP: #743494) This is due to
an incompatibility between Chromium's GNOME keyring integration and the password
sync feature that was introduced in Chromium 10.
[...more explanation, then standard apt-listchanges style changelog starting with 11.0.696.68~r84545-0ubuntu0.10.10.1 follows]

but apt-listchanges and indeed Synaptic just display the developer-oriented part of the changelog for chromium-browser:

chromium-browser (11.0.696.68~r84545-0ubuntu0.10.10.1) maverick-security; urgency=low
[ Fabien Tassin <fta@ubuntu.com> ]
* New Minor upstream release from the Stable Channel (LP: #781822)
This release fixes the following security issues:
+ WebKit issues:
- [64046] High, CVE-2011-1799: Bad casts in Chromium WebKit glue. Credit
to Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined).
- [80608] High, CVE-2011-1800: Integer overflows in SVG filters. Credit
to Google Chrome Security Team (Cris Neckar).
[...]

I'd really like to read the "for ordinary people" preface to the changelogs that Update Manager displays, but for me, the drawbacks of viewing a hundred of these in the Update Manager are:

I have a pretty poor Net connection and the download latency for changelogs is high (even from a very close mirror), so I'd like to download them and view them offline
I'd much prefer to use the whole screen to read a few of these quickly rather than fiddle with the little viewing pane in U.M.
I can not search across the changelogs in the way I could with grep or less.


Is there a way to download the same changelogs that Update Manager displays using a command line tool, or even a simple way to do it in Python? I can do the whole custom tool thing when I find time to spend on acquiring the needed skills, I was just wondering if non-programmers (or programmers with enough other stuff on their plate) have a way to achieve the same end.