Hello everybody, I got assigned to this issue here: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/62823 The users would like to have a notice in pre/post install/upgrade notifications via pacman .install files. I am not a fan of spamming such news via pacman and I think the installation/upgrade process should be clean of such messages, but I don't have access to the news tool on our website as well. So what can we do here? I am a big fan of Gentoos Newsletter feature[1]. It would be super awesome if we would have a tool such like `archnews <packagename>` to retrieve NEWS about a certain package from an endpoint. This endpoint should be controllable by every maintainer (devs and TUs included). I discussed this with coderobe a bit and we came to different solutions: Solution 1: a NEWS file inside of the package repository: -------------------------------------------------------- A maintainer could upload a `NEWS` file into the package repository and then a client could grab this information directly via downloading the file from: https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/plain/trunk/NEWS?h=packages... Pro: + every maintainer could control this NEWS file easily via our current tools. + It's easy to download the NEWS files (we can expect new tools from the community) Con: - We bloat our repository Solution 2: commit messages as NEWS ------------------------------------ The maintainer could/should put such news into the latest commit message. Pro: + no extra file + using existing infrastructure + one workflow Con: - I need an actual change in the repository to create a new NEWS object (If we have a look on my example with strongswan, I would need to add something in the PKGBUILD to make a new commit to make a new NEWS object) - It's more difficult to get with tools. The user needs to checkout the repository (in solution 1 it can be just a curl call) Solution 3: A webapp on news.archlinux.org with a fancy UI ----------------------------------------------------------- This solution would be the most work. We could have a new webapp (such like our security tracker) just for NEWS objects. Every maintainer should have access to their assigned packages. Pro: + Fancy + Easy to use + API endpoints Con: - A lot of work ------------------------------------------------------------- I would go for solution 1. What would be interesting to know for me: 1. Do you think that we actually *need* such a tool? 2. Would you use such a tool/workflow? 3. Do you have other/better ideas? I hope for an interesting constructive discussion. Best regards chris [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_Cheat_Sheet#Gentoo_Monthly_Newsletter_.2...