Bug#739805: [libdbi-perl] Developer-specific entries in NEWS.Debian

[Filipus Klutiero]

Package: libdbi-perl
Version: 1.631-1
Severity: wishlist

NEWS.Debian contains:

> libdbi-perl (1.631-1) unstable; urgency=medium
>
>   NOTE: This release changes the handle passed to Callbacks from being an
>   'inner' handle to being an 'outer' handle. If you have code that makes use
>   of Callbacks, ensure that you understand what this change means and review
>   your callback code.
>
>  -- gregor herrmann <gregoa at debian.org>  Sat, 15 Feb 2014 23:38:30 +0100
>
> libdbi-perl (1.630-1) unstable; urgency=low
>
>   NOTE: This release enables PrintWarn setting by default, regardless of the
>   value of the warnings switch (-w, use warnings, $WARNING, $^W).
>   Applications using DBI may generate more log messages than before.
>
>  -- Damyan Ivanov <dmn at debian.org>  Tue, 05 Nov 2013 15:04:06 +0200

These entries are displayed to apt-listchanges users when libdbi-perl is upgraded, whether these users are developing using libdbi-perl or simply have libdbi-perl installed as a dependency of MySQL or another package, as in the vast majority of cases.

Thanks for documenting interface changes, but NEWS.Debian is not the place to do so for non-development packages. These changes could be documented somewhere else or nowhere. When a library has an unstable interface, developers are expected to check for backwards-incompatible changes when they upgrade (or when the library is changed, since their software may be distributed anyway).

-- 
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com