Ben Finney <ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au> writes:
> Howdy all,
>
> Occasionally I notice a package upgrade on a host, but the Debian
> changelog for the package has no corresponding changelog entry for the
> new release.
>
> The most recent example is âmercurialâ:
>
> =====
> $ PACKAGE=mercurial
>
> $ dpkg-query -W -f 'Version: ${Version}\n' $PACKAGE
> Version: 1.4.1-1+b1
>
> $ zcat /usr/share/doc/$PACKAGE/changelog.Debian.gz | dpkg-parsechangelog -l-
> | grep '^Version:'
> Version: 1.4.1-1
> =====
>
> So, the version was upgraded to â1.2.1-1+b1â, but there latest entry in
> the changelog is still only â1.4.1-1â. There is no entry describing the
> changes in the latest release of the package, as specified in policy
> §4.4.
>
> How does this occur? A conversation on IRC suggested it might be related
> to binNMU upgrades, but I don't know enough about that aspect to judge.
>
> How can this be addressed so that changelog entries always accompany the
> binary package for any new release of a package? Is this a bug in some
> part of the system, and if so, where?
The +b<N> suffix on the version is indeed a binNMU. That means that the
source was recompiled without any changes to the source. The changelog
is the one from the source so it only has the source version as top
entry.
Package: mercurial
Architecture: amd64
Version: 1.4.1-1+b1
Source: mercurial (1.4.1-1)
Notice that the package metadata says the source for the binary package
mercurial 1.4.1-1+b1 is the source package mercurial 1.4.1-1.
This is no different to packages where the binary has a different verion
(and/or name) than the source. For example:
% dpkg-query -W -f 'Version: ${Version}\n' gcc
Version: 4:4.4.2-3
% zcat /usr/share/doc/gcc/changelog.Debian.gz | head --lines 1
gcc-defaults (1.92) unstable; urgency=low
Package: gcc
Architecture: amd64
Version: 4:4.4.2-3
Source: gcc-defaults (1.92)
MfG
Goswin
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