Description issue

[SeriousHoax]

Hi! Thanks for creating the plugin. I am testing it in a VM, and it works great.
But there is one annoyance that I would like to point out.
Currently, for all snapshot descriptions, the description is, libdnf5(dnf) transaction (pre) and libdnf5(dnf) transaction (post).
So, it's not easy to know actually which tasks like which package was installed or removed by DNF.
Is it possible for you to make it so that the description shows the actual task that was performed by DNF before/after creating the snapshot?
eg: dnf install fastfetch (pre)

[Plenvorik]

Hi @SeriousHoax,

Thanks for testing the plugin and for this thoughtful feedback! You raise a valid point about snapshot descriptions being less informative than they could be.

Let me share some context about the current implementation, the challenges involved, and a potential solution.

What's Already There

The plugin stores more information than what's visible in the description column. If you look at the userdata column (or the info.xml files in /.snapshots/<num>/), you'll find:

ops=i2, sudo=alex, transaction-result=success

Where ops=i2 means "install 2 packages", ops=u59 means "update 59 packages", ops=r3 means "remove 3 packages", etc.

Additionally, you can use snapper status to see exactly what changed between two snapshots:

$ sudo snapper status 891..892
+..... /usr/bin/tesseract
+..... /usr/share/tesseract/tessdata/deu.traineddata
...

This shows the actual files that were added/modified/removed.

The Challenge with Package Names

The difficulty with putting package names into the description is scalability:

Transaction	Current	With Package Names
dnf install htop	ops=i1	install htop (ok)
dnf install tesseract tesseract-langpack-deu	ops=i2	install tesseract, tesseract-langpack-deu (ok)
dnf update (59 packages)	ops=u59	update glibc, kernel, systemd, ... (truncated?)
dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"	ops=i108	???

For large transactions, the description would become unwieldy.

DNF Already Has This Information

Here's something you might find useful - DNF maintains its own transaction history with full details:

$ dnf history list
...
142 | dnf install dino  | 2025-12-19 09:52 | Install  3

$ dnf history info 142
Transaction ID : 142
Description    : dnf install dino
Packages altered:
  Install dino-0:0.5.0-3.fc43.x86_64                        User
  Install libomemo-c-0:0.5.1-2.fc43.x86_64                  Dependency
  Install webrtc-audio-processing0.3-0:0.3.1-15.fc43.x86_64 Dependency

Notice that DNF distinguishes between packages you explicitly requested (User) and automatically resolved dependencies (Dependency). This is more detailed than any snapshot description could reasonably be.

Proposed Solution: Reference the DNF Transaction ID

Instead of duplicating package information, we could include the DNF transaction ID in the snapshot description:

Current:  libdnf5(dnf) transaction (post)
Proposed: libdnf5(dnf) transaction #142 (post)

This would give you a direct reference to look up full details:

$ sudo snapper list | grep 892
892 | post | ... | libdnf5(dnf) transaction #142 (post)

$ dnf history info 142
# Full transaction details including all packages

Benefits:

• Short and consistent description (no truncation issues)
• Works perfectly for 1 package or 100 packages
• Direct link to complete transaction information
• No data duplication

I'll need to investigate whether this is technically feasible (the transaction ID might not be available at the right time in the plugin hooks), but it seems like an elegant approach.

What do you think? Would this workflow work for your use case?