Weblog entry #15 for fsateler

apt-listreadme
Posted by fsateler on Fri 6 Apr 2007 at 21:21
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I've been thinking of writing apt-listreadme. It is basically the same as apt-listchanges, but it would list readmes instead of the changelogs. So it would have to extract both debian and upstream's readmes (obviusly this could be configured), display them (through less, a web browser) and/or mail them to someone. I have to consider also if it makes sense to write a new program instead of adding to apt-listchanges (which seems much more logical).
The idea is that whenever installing *new* packages, the readme should be shown, as I usually never read them and it is useful to read them. Obviously they shouldn't be displayed when upgrading or reinstalling a package.

 

Comments on this Entry

Posted by kaerast (82.47.xx.xx) on Sat 7 Apr 2007 at 15:11
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Great idea! I'd use this.

Presumably you'd have it list the files in the package which would be installed to /usr/share/doc/*/README* and then do something with them. Which should be fairly easy if you're just going to reuse the apt-listchanges and/or apt-listbugs code.

Personally I'd use it before installing, I'd want to run "apt-listreadme" before running "aptitude install".

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Posted by fsateler (200.83.xx.xx) on Sat 7 Apr 2007 at 19:38
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Well, ideally both apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges should run before downloading the packages, but apparently apt can't currently handle that. So we're kind of stuck at asking after the packages download.
As an aside, apt-listchanges is written in python, which is a language I don't really like nor understand, so I guess it'll take me a while to familiarize with the current code.
--------
Felipe Sateler

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Posted by orchid (209.217.xx.xx) on Thu 12 Apr 2007 at 02:05
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I wrote a program to do just this, It is in C but you might get some ideas there or even help improve it. http://www.magma.ca/~debian/

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Posted by fsateler (200.83.xx.xx) on Thu 12 Apr 2007 at 03:08
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While the program is interesting, and some ideas could be taken from it, docread doesn't integrate with apt, which is what I want. The most important part is to display readmes and such before or right after the packages are installed.
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Felipe Sateler

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