5.5 How to keep informed about the changes in the packages.

Every package installs in its documentation directory (/usr/share/doc/packagename) a file called changelog.Debian.gz which contains the list of changes made to the package since the last version. You can read these files with zless' help, for example, but it is something not so easy, after an complete system upgrade, to start searching changelogs for every upgraded package.

There's a way to automatize this task by means of a tool called apt-listchanges. To begin with one needs to install the apt-listchanges package. During the package installation, Debconf will configure it. Some questions may not be shown to you depending on the priority you set up Debconf to use. Answer to the questions as you want.

The first question asks how you want the changes to be showed by apt-listchanges. You can have them mailed to you, which is good for automatic upgrades, or you can ask them in a pager like less, so you can inspect the changes before leting the upgrade continue. If you don't want apt-listchanges running automaticaly during upgrades you can answer none.

After apt-listchanges is installed, as soon as packages are downloaded (or gotten from a CD or mounted disk) by apt it will show the lists of changes made to those packages before installing them.