Package: apticron Version: 1.1.26 Severity: normal First some reminder:
1) I see this package has been updated with different package description at this stage of release. The content you added is best suited in README.Debian. This may caused translation mismatch issue for the package description. 2) To get this released for lenny, you need to write to [email protected] with "please unblock ..." mail with required information. Now to the bug report. I think this package should describe its value clearly to the user for the current APT system. Let's look into situation. It seems to me, this apticron package is a quick fix to the current apt feature which seems to lack capability to send mail for prompting users to install packages when it is configured to do download only. Please note, APT package since 0.5.28 Ubuntu hoary and 0.5.29 Debian unstable (Sat, 13 Nov 2004) has its own script /etc/cron.daily/apt, which can do: * fancy auto-clean with rule * check and download upgradable packages automatically * automatic unattended upgrade + need to install unattended-upgrades package + aimed for security upgrade and have its blacklist capability + mail capability (The extent of this, i do not know for sure?) These can be enabled via apt configuration variables (usually stored in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/02backup and 50unattended-upgrades). Since this is enhancement script to apt, this should clearly document what part of apt this package will enhance etc. Also recommending to install cron-apt without mentioning apt's own capability is not kind to the user. We as users wonder why? When it is written in package description, this impact is big. Let's compare these: apt's cron script cron-apt script enable by adding parameter manually installing to cron download only shell script(main) shell script auto upgrade python script shell script complicated checks simple apt-get -y upgrade Except for cron-apt script depending on python for auto-upgrade, I see no reason to recommend it over apt. At least both methods should be mentioned. Although I have no relation with Ubuntu, considering Ubuntu uses this apt's feature extensively, I think this is quite stable part of code. I am not very familiar with the whole picture. So I think further study might be needed to be correct. I hope to see more balanced documentation for what to do in README.Debian might be useful to everyone. (Also, adding patch to apt itself to do what apticron does might benefit more people.) Osamu -- System Information: Debian Release: 5.0 APT prefers unstable APT policy: (800, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages apticron depends on: ii apt 0.7.20.1 Advanced front-end for dpkg ii apt-listchanges 2.83 package change history notificatio ii bsd-mailx [mailx] 8.1.2-0.20081101cvs-2 A simple mail user agent ii debconf [debconf-2 1.5.24 Debian configuration management sy ii iproute 20080725-2 networking and traffic control too ii mailx 1:20081101-2 Transitional package for mailx ren apticron recommends no packages. apticron suggests no packages. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
