As a user experiencing this issue as a daily nuisance and after seeing
the mentioned "summary_before_name" gconf parameter having no effect I
went digging in the source code to check if any of its logic was still
present. First conclusion; the value of gconf parameter summary-before-
name (dash, not underscore) is still read and set to a local variable
but never used for anything in the program logic.
However, by studying the changelog (file:debian/changelog) I realized
that the current state of the package listing is an implementation of
the design specification called "SoftwareUpdates".
update-manager (1:0.178) raring; urgency=low
* Implement the "available updates" details pane from the SoftwareUpdates
spec. Specifically, this adds grouping of related updates, adds an
"Ubuntu base" group for core packages, and shows only the description
summary in the main view.
* Show a restart icon next to packages that declare they will need a
system restart via XB-Restart-Required: system
-- Michael Terry <mte...@ubuntu.com> Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:20:22 -0500
Detailed in section "Expanded presentation of updates"
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdates#Expanded_presentation_of_updates)
is that the "title" of a package should be shown to the user. The
"title" being defined in the "SoftwarePackageOperations" specification
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwarePackageOperations#title) as the package
synopsis, unless package supplies a user visible application and
.desktop file, then the "nice looking" application name is the title.
This change was implemented in r2582 of update-manager:
$ bzr log -r 2582
------------------------------------------------------------
revno: 2582 [merge]
committer: Michael Terry <michael.te...@canonical.com>
branch nick: trunk
timestamp: Thu 2013-01-24 13:03:42 -0500
message:
Merge available updates pane changes to group packages and show the
description, not the package name
------------------------------------------------------------
So despite the long standing silence from maintainers it is indeed a
conscious design choice to show a wobbly word soup instead of the
package name, it is not a regression or a bug.
For the curious, the previous use of the summary-before-name gconf
parameter was to decide whether the primary identifier in the then more
elaborate listing (something like
https://www.howtoforge.com/images/upgrade_ubuntu_9.10_to_10.04/2.jpg)
was to be the summary or package name (it was probably a change in
default from name to summary prompting the report of this bug).
$ bzr log -r 2582 -p|grep summary_ -A3
- if self.summary_before_name:
- contents = "%s\n<small>%s</small>" % (summary, name)
- else:
- contents = "<b>%s</b>\n<small>%s</small>" % (name, summary)
So the question is now where to turn to improve the situation? If the
design decision is non-changeable would maintainers maybe accept/devise
a patch adding a configuration parameter that toggles whether to show
package name or summary?
--
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/655998
Title:
Update Manager listing should show package names, not just
descriptions
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