It would be handy if apt-listchanges could accept an HTTP
and/or FTP url as a file specification. For example:

apt-listchanges http://www.somewhere.com/mynewversionofblah.deb

It would be downloaded to somewhere temporary (either /tmp or
the apt cache), then compared with the version on the system.
This would make making decisions about whether to install a new
package to fix a bug/add a feature/whatever very easy.

Regards,
Andrew.

In fact, this suggested feature would be even more useful if
apt-listchanges could use the current version of package x (as
specified by whatever was downloaded from apt's sources.list)
and compare with the version currently installed.

e.g.

Package foo (version 1.3) is installed

sources.list specifies a location where foo (version 1.4) can be
found.

apt-listchanges --installed-version foo (or something similar)
lists the changes between version 1.4 and version 1.3.

Regards,
Andrew.

I don't think I understand.  This is exactly how apt-listchanges works.  If
you have version 1.3 installed, and you 'apt-get install foo', which
downloads version 1.4, apt-listchanges shows the changes between 1.3 and
1.4.

The request was for a feature to have apt-listchanges download a specified
deb directly, rather than using what apt downloads.

Ah, OK. Yes, I was getting confused. Let me scratch the whole
of this bug report and start again, trying to explain clearly
this time. Ignore what I said in the previous two entries.

Currently apt-listchanges compares the version on disk with the
version available with apt's sources.list. This makes sense and
is useful. I see two extra features as being useful, as these
are what I'm requesting:

1. apt-listchanges --download http://somewhere.random.org/apackage.deb
would download apackage.deb and compare it with the apackage
which is installed. This would be useful if one had found, for
example, an unofficial .deb somewhere but had not put the
source in sources.list

2. Currently apt-listchanges has no way of changing the 'pin'
as apt does. This means if (for example) one runs a system
which is predominantly testing, but with unstable also
available in sources.list, with the default 'pin' on testing,
it's not clear whether apt-listchanges will compare the version
on disk with the 'testing' version or the 'unstable' version.
I'm sure you know which, but it would be helpful to a -t option
to apt-listchanges so it behaves in a similar way to apt.

Both of these options would be most useful when using
apt-listchanges NOT via apt, but when considering whether to
use apt to upgrade.

Hopefully this makes things a bit clearer. Sorry about the
confusion.

Regards,
Andrew.

-- 
Best regards,

Brian T