no longer reports installed and available versions

[Brian J. Murrell]

Binary package hint: update-manager

When viewing available updates, update-manager used to report the installed version and the version that was available for update. It no longer does this. This is important to know to understand what you are updating to.

Please restore this functionality.

[Data (ubuntuaddress)]

I would second this.

I know that the changelog also contains the version of the packages. But sometimes, the changelog is not available yet and is it IMHO important to know which version you are upgrading to.
The other thing is, that, sometimes you do not know the version of the currently installed package. You can just assume, that it is one version number lower that the update and hope that's in the cangelog history. But that is not always correct (e.g. if you have skipped an update at some point)

However, I do not think that this is a real bug. So I am marking this as wishlist.

Maybe someone who knows, why this change was introduced, could mention the reasons?
Thanks in advance!

[Data (ubuntuaddress)]

Somehow I do not have the appropriate rights to change the package's importance.

Could someone else please change it to "wishlist"?

[Brian J. Murrell (brian-interlinx)]

On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 11:08 +0000, Data wrote:
>
> However, I do not think that this is a real bug. So I am marking this as
> wishlist.

I disagree. It's a but insomuch as it's a regression in behaviour. If
it had never behaved as it did then yes, this would be an RFE, but it's
a bug since it's no longer doing what it used to do. That is a
regression.

> Maybe someone who knows, why this change was introduced, could mention the reasons?

Probably just more of the sad dumbing down of the update tool that is
being seen elsewhere. Unfortunately.

b.

[Data (ubuntuaddress)]

OK, having followed your argumentation I agree with you that it is a bug.
So I am tagging "regression" and marking as Confirmed.

Let's see what the dev's think about that...

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This was changed in update-manager version 0.87 but I'm uncertain what the changelog entry means by the details tab. I couldn't find it.

  * UpdateManager/UpdateManager.py:
    - remove the "from $version to $version" from the main
      list as this is duplicated information from the details tab

[Data (ubuntuaddress)]

I guess, the details tab mentioned is actually the "changes" tab. And as already stated above, it shows usually (although much later) the version of the package that's going to be installed. However, often you do not know the version of the currently installed package.
Furthermore it is much easier to get this information at "first glance" in the List of packages than somewhere down in a changelog. And I think the versions of the packages are important information!

[Brian J. Murrell (brian-interlinx)]

All of this discussion about versions being shown in the changelog entry assumes a changelog entry. Ubuntu's repository is not the only repository out there and most (all?) other repositories don't maintain changelogs, so the *ONLY* way to know what version you are updating from, to was the ones displayed in the upper window.

This is absolutely a usability regression with only a partial work-around.

[Richard Birnie (rbirnie-deactivatedaccount)]

This bug is a duplicate of bug 189406. That report has a patch attached that claims to fix the issue so let's continue in that thread. If anyone wants to test the patch feel free. Marking this bug as a duplicate.