Regression: apt-listchanges always sends changelogs

I can confirm this problem in Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS). listchanges.conf says "which=news", but nevertheless on each update I get a prompt with the changelogs, and a corresponding email. That's rather annoying, I'd prefer only to be prompted if there's really something of importance.

In Debian 6 and 7, the package works fine, so this seems to be an Ubuntu regression.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Fix attached.

The problem is that there is an Ubuntu patch which falls back to downloading changelogs for every package when the script doesn't find any changelogs in the binary package. Due to faulty logic this always occurs when "which=news".

This patch changes behaviour so the fallback only triggers when "which=changelogs" or "which=both".

The attachment "correct-changelogs-fallback-logic.patch" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

Any chance we'll get someone to look at this?

The regression was introduced by Martin Pitt for natty (11.04) and it's unclear what the reason for introducing it was. In any case there is a patch available and if it needs updating I'd be happy to work on that.

The changelog from the package that introduced this problem:
apt-listchanges (2.85.5ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * apt-listchanges/DebianFiles.py: If the new package does not have a Debian
    changelog, fall back to apt-changelog.

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:13:34 +0100

Another and possibly more succinct way to write your patch follows:

and (which == 'both' or which == 'changelogs'):

vs

and which in ['both', 'changelogs']:

Actually, your patch looks more like the other tests so let's use it.

I've uploaded the fix to vivid, thanks for working on this. For this to be fixed in Trusty and Utopic we'd need to follow the SRU procedures documented at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates, specifically having a test case would be quite helpful.

This bug was fixed in the package apt-listchanges - 2.85.13ubuntu3

---------------
apt-listchanges (2.85.13ubuntu3) vivid; urgency=medium

  * apt-listchanges/DebianFiles.py: only use apt-get changelog if which is
    changelogs or both, so not for news (LP: #839378). Thanks to Launchpad
    user snafu109 for the patch.
 -- Brian Murray <email address hidden> Wed, 11 Feb 2015 14:11:55 -0800

Closing Papercuts task as issue resolved.