How to view release notes / changelog with pacman [closed]

Question

Like many fellow archers, I use pacman to update my software each day. Often there are updates like this:

foo-1.1 ---> foo.1.2

I wonder if there's a way to see what has been updated from foo-1.1 to foo-1.2 or release notes explaining bug fixes or new features etc. Something like pacman -Log foo.

Rezzani

found it:bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=70557 – Rezzani

Answer 1

From the manual:

QUERY OPTIONS
   -c, --changelog
       View the ChangeLog of a package. Not every package will provide one but it will be shown if available.

So, if you wanted the changelog for the vim package, for example, you would do: pacman -Qc vim.

Fungistat

Yep, I've found that some don't have the change logs. I have a feeling it's mostly luck and maybe the popularity of the package. – Fungistat

@RyanA. ;) right popularity it must be. Event that obscure package linux-X.xx.x-x comes without change log, maybe it is not popular enough? – Alga

Answer 2

A better solution would be to use pacolog (gitlab, aur), which at least shows you the package commits, e.g.pacolog -l 3 vim

Hathor

pacolog is in AUR – Des

Answer 3

You can use asp checkout pkgname and git diff ... to see what happened.

Example:

$ asp checkout grub
$ cd grub
$ git log
[...hashes are displayed in the log...]
$ git diff 7d756cac35c2c9e433f7b32dda580cb896e75bbd 860fbf55a3856684bde4cbf79b92fb82f10a68bd
diff --git a/trunk/PKGBUILD b/trunk/PKGBUILD
index 3cb944a..83b9675 100644
--- a/trunk/PKGBUILD
+++ b/trunk/PKGBUILD
@@ -18,8 +18,8 @@ _GRUB_EMU_BUILD="0"
 pkgname='grub'
 pkgdesc='GNU GRand Unified Bootloader (2)'
 epoch=2
-_commit='65bc45963014773e2062ccc63ff34a089d2e352e'
-_pkgver=2.06.r456.g65bc45963
+_commit='e67a551a48192a04ab705fca832d82f850162b64'
+_pkgver=2.06.r499.ge67a551a4
 _unifont_ver='15.0.01'
 pkgver=${_pkgver/-/}
 pkgrel=1
@@ -84,7 +84,6 @@ _configure_options=(
        PACKAGE_VERSION="${epoch}:${pkgver}-${pkgrel}"
        FREETYPE="pkg-config freetype2"
        BUILD_FREETYPE="pkg-config freetype2"
-       --enable-mm-debug
        --enable-nls
        --enable-device-mapper
        --enable-cache-stats

Des