The internet is full of tips on how to read the changelog from an RPM package you have installed.
How do you read the changelog from a .rpm file before you install it?
The answer is amazingly simple:
rpm -q --changelog -p /path/to/file.rpm
Anything you can query from an installed package with rpm -q you can query from a file with -p.
So why is the answer hard so to find? Because the rpm man page describes -p,--package PACKAGE_FILE
under select-options, but leaves it out under query-options.
The fact that there is a curly brace where there should be a square bracket tells me the maintainers of this man page don’t actually use it.
select-options
[PACKAGE_NAME] [-a,--all] [-f,--file FILE]
[-g,--group GROUP] {-p,--package PACKAGE_FILE]
[--fileid MD5] [--hdrid SHA1] [--pkgid MD5] [--tid TID]
[--querybynumber HDRNUM] [--triggeredby PACKAGE_NAME]
[--whatprovides CAPABILITY] [--whatrequires CAPABILITY]
query-options
[--changelog] [-c,--configfiles] [-d,--docfiles] [--dump]
[--filesbypkg] [-i,--info] [--last] [-l,--list]
[--provides] [--qf,--queryformat QUERYFMT]
[-R,--requires] [--scripts] [-s,--state]
[--triggers,--triggerscripts]
Did you catch that?
Under select-options {-p,–package PACKAGE_FILE] should read [-p,–package PACKAGE_FILE] and the package flag should be under query-options as well.
You can file the bug report. I have work to do.
Did you find this post useful or have questions or comments? Please let me know!