APT Changelog support

Support
1

Hi there!

I had one of these interesting moment where I just started looking into things, that don’t work as expected.

This time it’s why apt changelog <package-name> does not work.

As far as I understand it that’s special HTTP endpoints which deliver that content, i.e. like here for Debian, which is configured as Acquire::Changelogs::URI::Origin::Debian "https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/@CHANGEPATH@_changelog"; in the apt config.
(and `APT::Changelogs::Server` is the variable for aptitude, though never used that before)

Of course I had the short thought if this could be cloned into pulp, but is it really worth the time? Maybe but guess that’s kinda far middle or end of the backlog. :slight_smile:

Right now I’m looking into if it’s possible to define that variable for the foreman server source, no luck yet but lets see!

Cheers, Lukas

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Further information!

The local variable depends on the Origin field of a repo’s Release file, unfortunately this is not set in the pulp provided repository.
I think this would even have 2 benefits to having the Origin set in the release file on the one hand it can be used for configuration, and on the other hand I think to remember that this even shows up in apt list –installed!

And another step further, looking at the Release file from Debian, they also define the Changelogs endpoint in there, not sure yet but maybe apt can pick that up automatically, so maybe if it’s not desired to cache the whole changelog in pulp, it would still be possible to define that variable and making apt look outside the network for changelogs.

Testing these 2 assumptions will be a bit trickier (outside of pulp with a webserver), lets see if I can provide more information in a few weeks or months.

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This was a very helpful post from the ubuntu forums btw.

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Just noticed on the code side that if an upstream repo has a origin it will also add it, but somehow apt isn’t picking it up.

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I agree that “APT changelog support” sounds like a pulp_deb feature request, but I also agree that there is no telling when or if this would actually ever be planned for development.

In principle we want pulp_deb to support anything apt can do with official Ubuntu and Debian repositories. :wink:

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Hi @lumarel !

Thanks for the report here, this is good data. I’m with @quba42 that it would make most sense to be implemented in pulp_deb.

Since I don’t know too much about how the Debian repo origin works - does this strike you as a separate bug perhaps with how the Origin is presented by pulp_deb?

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This is my state in the thought process right now, I still have to figure out why it doesn’t work, when I got more time I hopefully will figure out why it’s still not working even though the Debian origin is in the pulp hosted source :slight_smile:

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