Sample Header Ad - 728x90

Is it possible to supply aptitude with changelogs of non-Debian packages?

2 votes
3 answers
450 views
When trying to view changelogs of apt packages, aptitude often gives the error Cannot display changelog: Origin of is unknown (maybe not an official Debian package ...). The word "Debian" here is a bit misleading, because so far, it seems to me that only the packages which come from sources listed in the main file /etc/apt/sources.list can have "changelogs". In my case, those are Ubuntu packages, which, although derived from corresponding Debian packages, come from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ and often have ubuntu in the version of the package, suggesting that Ubuntu maintainers rebuild the distributed binaries. man aptitude mentions changelogs in two places: 1. in description of changelog command: > **changelog** > > Downloads and displays the Debian changelog for each of the given source or binary packages. 2. In description of environment variable $PAGER: > **PAGER** > > If this environment variable is set, aptitude will use it to display changelogs when “aptitude changelog” is invoked. If not set, it defaults to more. Is there any way to make aptitude show changelogs for non-Debian packages? Is there some magic line that could be added to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/* files to make it do so? Do non-"Debian" package providers even have a way to provide changelogs to users? P.S. Same thing applies to apt changelog, which fails with error message:
E: Failed to fetch changelog:/.changelog  Changelog unavailable for -
obviously, aptitude, apt changelog, and apt-listchanges all use the same files for their output.
Asked by andrybak (925 rep)
Oct 9, 2021, 11:35 PM
Last activity: Mar 18, 2023, 10:22 AM