Need help on apt-listchanges

michalng · 02-18-2011, 02:19 AM

Install Debian AMD64 Testing with netinstall CD + minimal KDE4 when Debian 6 came out.

Today, I did a aptitude update/upgrade and got these items listed:

Quote:

aptitude upgrade
The following packages will be upgraded:
bash-completion clamtk dbus dbus-x11 google-chrome-beta isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libdbus-1-3 libgnutls26 libpciaccess0 libsensors4 libtextcat-data-utf8 libusb-0.1-4 libxaw7 patch pm-utils usbutils
17 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 24.4 MB of archives. After unpacking 8,532 kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y

Followed by this

Quote:

Get:1 http://....... libusb-0.1-4 amd64 2:0.1.12-17 [22.0 kB]
Get:2 http://....... isc-dhcp-client amd64 4.1.1-P1-16 [280 kB]
Get:3 http://....... isc-dhcp-common amd64 4.1.1-P1-16 [338 kB]
Get:4 http://....... bash-completion all 1:1.3-1 [151 kB]
Get:5 http://....... libgnutls26 amd64 2.10.4-2 [614 kB]
Get:6 http://....... stable/main google-chrome-beta amd64 10.0.648.82-r75062 [21.4 MB]
Get:7 http://....... patch amd64 2.6.1-1 [121 kB]
Get:8 http://....... clamtk all 4.31-1 [279 kB]
Get:9 http://....... dbus-x11 amd64 1.4.1-2 [44.6 kB]
Get:10 http://....... libdbus-1-3 amd64 1.4.1-2 [153 kB]
Get:11 http://....... dbus amd64 1.4.1-2 [244 kB]
Get:12 http://....... libpciaccess0 amd64 0.12.1-1 [40.9 kB]
Get:13 http://....... libsensors4 amd64 1:3.2.0-1 [54.9 kB]
Get:14 http://....... libtextcat-data-utf8 all 2.2-7 [78.7 kB]
Get:15 http://....... libxaw7 amd64 2:1.0.9-2 [220 kB]
Get:16 http://....... pm-utils all 1.4.1-6 [127 kB]
Get:17 http://....... usbutils amd64 1:001-1 [216 kB]
Fetched 24.4 MB in 22s (1,066 kB/s)

which is the norm.

On my computers, this is then normally followed by the unpacking and installing of the above packages.

However, this time instead of unpacking the following message pops up

Quote:

Reading changelogs... Done
apt-listchanges: Mailing root: apt-listchanges: news for raindance
(Reading database ... 98856 files and directories currently installed.)

This is then followed by unpacking and installing of the packages.

Question -
- is this normal? (or is this configured specially as such for Debian 6)
- I did not installed apt-listchanges (it's not in my install script), how does it gets in?
- anyone uses it here? how is apt-listchanges useful for your home computer/laptop?

the trooper · 02-18-2011, 07:02 AM

Quote:

is this normal? (or is this configured specially as such for Debian 6)

Looks normal to me.

Quote:

I did not installed apt-listchanges (it's not in my install script), how does it gets in?

I think it's installed because it is a suggested package for amavisd-new which is in turn a dependency for clamav.
It looks safe enough to remove if you don't want it:

Code:

ade@Pc1:~$ aptitude -s purge apt-listchanges
The following packages will be REMOVED:  
  apt-listchanges{p} 
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 6 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 287 kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
Abort.

Quote:

how is apt-listchanges useful

From the terminal:

Quote:

Description: package change history notification tool
The tool apt-listchanges can compare a new version of a package with the one currently installed and
show what has been changed, by extracting the relevant entries from the Debian changelog and NEWS
files.

It can be run on several .deb archives at a time to get a list of all changes that would be caused by
installing or upgrading a group of packages. When configured as an APT plugin it will do this
automatically during upgrades.

Edit: I have removed this package myself without problems,not sure why it got installed on my machine as I have apt configured to not install suggested and recommended packages:

Code:

ade@Pc1:~$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf
APT::Default-Release "testing";
APT::Install-Recommends "0";
APT::Install-Suggests "0";