Is there a way to use dpkg to view a changelog between different versions of a package?
If I wanted to know e.g., why 'passwd' was being upgraded in a recent update is there a way to use dpkg to see what changed?
$ dpkg -l passwd
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
ii passwd 1:4.2-3.1 amd64 change and administer password an
It's being upgraded to 1:4.2-3.3…
I know with Debian I can look at the package notes and from there at the linked Debian changelog.
But this doesn't apply to all deb based distros, and it's awkward for a quick look at what's new.
Best Answer
dpkg does not provide any facility to read the changelog of a package. you should extract the package and read the changelog
then you can read the changelog using the dpkg-parsechangelog utility
Since that's a real pain , if your distro is using apt-get you can use
or