Comment 11 for bug 655998

As a user experiencing this issue as a daily nuisance and after seeing the mentioned "summary_before_name" gconf parameter having no effect I went digging in the source code to check if any of its logic was still present. First conclusion; the value of gconf parameter summary-before-name (dash, not underscore) is still read and set to a local variable but never used for anything in the program logic.

However, by studying the changelog (file:debian/changelog) I realized that the current state of the package listing is an implementation of the design specification called "SoftwareUpdates".

update-manager (1:0.178) raring; urgency=low

  * Implement the "available updates" details pane from the SoftwareUpdates
    spec. Specifically, this adds grouping of related updates, adds an
    "Ubuntu base" group for core packages, and shows only the description
    summary in the main view.
  * Show a restart icon next to packages that declare they will need a
    system restart via XB-Restart-Required: system

 -- Michael Terry <email address hidden> Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:20:22 -0500

Detailed in section "Expanded presentation of updates" (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdates#Expanded_presentation_of_updates) is that the "title" of a package should be shown to the user. The "title" being defined in the "SoftwarePackageOperations" specification (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwarePackageOperations#title) as the package synopsis, unless package supplies a user visible application and .desktop file, then the "nice looking" application name is the title.

This change was implemented in r2582 of update-manager:

$ bzr log -r 2582
------------------------------------------------------------
revno: 2582 [merge]
committer: Michael Terry <email address hidden>
branch nick: trunk
timestamp: Thu 2013-01-24 13:03:42 -0500
message:
  Merge available updates pane changes to group packages and show the description, not the package name
------------------------------------------------------------

So despite the long standing silence from maintainers it is indeed a conscious design choice to show a wobbly word soup instead of the package name, it is not a regression or a bug.

For the curious, the previous use of the summary-before-name gconf parameter was to decide whether the primary identifier in the then more elaborate listing (something like https://www.howtoforge.com/images/upgrade_ubuntu_9.10_to_10.04/2.jpg) was to be the summary or package name (it was probably a change in default from name to summary prompting the report of this bug).

$ bzr log -r 2582 -p|grep summary_ -A3
- if self.summary_before_name:
- contents = "%s\n<small>%s</small>" % (summary, name)
- else:
- contents = "<b>%s</b>\n<small>%s</small>" % (name, summary)

So the question is now where to turn to improve the situation? If the design decision is non-changeable would maintainers maybe accept/devise a patch adding a configuration parameter that toggles whether to show package name or summary?