Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 221255
Feature request: Update history
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:52 EST
The new update details in the package updater are very useful. However it would also be advantageous to have a history of previously installed updates. Including more information about the original package version and the new package version. Currently when fedora styled update detail is shown the package versions are not displayed. This can make it difficult to track the changes between package versions in the event that an update breaks a package.
Thinking aloud, how about adding a "History" or "Recent Changes" tab that shows a time-based view of what happened. One idea I've got is to show a timeline of the things that have changed, showing something like this: + Today (Saturday March 31st) + 12.14pm - 12.15pm: Installed Eric (SUMMARY GOES HERE) Removed Sprog (SUMMARY GOES HERE) 2 dependencies installed (LINK TO DETAILS) + Yesterday (Friday March 30th) + 6.59pm: Updated 5 packages (DISCLOSURE TRIANGLE FOR DETAILS?) Updated: file.i386 4.19-2.fc6 Updated: Django.noarch 0.96-1.fc6 Updated: yum.noarch 3.0.5-1.fc6 Updated: yum-updatesd.noarch 3.0.5-1.fc6 Updated: Django-docs.noarch 0.96-1.fc6 + 5.35pm - 5.45pm: Installed TurboGears (SUMMARY GOES HERE) 15 dependencies installed (LINK TO DETAILS) Thursday March 29th: + 8.58am: Updated 30 packages (details) With a filter entry box at the top allowing the user to view changes to individual packages (with name-completion based on the list of all packages) Each reference to a package could have a checkbox, allowing one to select to removed installed packages and reinstall removed packages. However, implementation-wise, I believe it would have to scour /var/log/yum.log, and all we have there is a timestamped list of "Updated", "Installed", "Erased" events. So I don't think we've got enough implementation to implement this on actual transactions, merely periods of activity. You could also have a per-package window, available when clicking on an individual package, giving a timeline of all events relating to that package name (installs, updates, removals) etc
Why not improve yum's logging capability, and implement those features in pirut. Surely its not that difficult to improve the log files details. For instance, how about adding log details like these Nov 29 22:32:46 Yum updatesd reports packages available for updates Nov 29 22:38:36 Yum update session initiated by user klattimer through pirut Nov 29 22:41:41 Yum is locked for the duration of this operation. Nov 29 22:42:44 Dependency Installed: system-config-printer-libs.i386 0.7.40-1.fc6 Nov 29 22:52:47 Obsolete removed: nfs-utils.i386 1.0.10-4.fc6 Nov 29 22:57:36 Yum update session completed Once you have those details embedded into the logs its a simple matter to scrape that data to format some nice information to the user.
Scraping is almost never the answer if you want to provide nice information to the user as with locales, etc it's incredibly painful to do in a consistent fashion. All of the logging that's done is being directly done via yum; if you want to see changes in what it logs, I'd propose bringing it up on the upstream yum devel list.
Rather than closing as wont-fix why not move it over to the Yum bugs, as I'm not a yum-devel subscriber and am only posting this as a feature enhancement which SHOULD be acknowledged and implemented. I do not have the time to spend discussing these matters with the development team that should work on this. I file bugs to help, not to inconvenience myself.