On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Mark Haney <mhaney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > That said, rolling updates are the way to go. No need for continual > upgrades to 'releases' just update to the latest version of a package > and be done with it. I'm just not sure a 'major release' design is the > way to go any longer. With internet access the way it is, why not just > do rolling updates? Do you understand that there are some operations which can not be done on the running system. The jump to kernel 2.6 and the migration to using udev from the static device naming scheme are not the sort of things that you could have been done easily with rolling updates. These are examples of a class of low level technology changes which make preupgrade and the installer imaging worthwhile compared to live upgrades. That doesn't say live upgrades are impossible, but it may require extra effort on your part to deal with low level changes that you may not completely understand and that package management is not designed to solve. Additionally rolling updates significantly complicate testing. Static release points make it possible to carve out a set of priority test cases as part of the pre-release process and focus on those senarios to make sure they get the most testings. We do not have the resources to test all possible upgrade scenarios that you could run into. Bugs happen. Bugs will continue to happen. If we spread testing so thin that we are trying to test every possible upgrade scenario..they will all work equally poorly. What we can do is prioritize testing. Highest priority is fresh installs...because ultimately that is the fall back. Next highest priority is upgrades via media or preupgrade. Live upgrades would be prioritized both of those given the manpower available. Once you come to terms with these last two paragraphs, you are free to attempt to do rolling updates by switching your fedora-release package (rawhide or the next Fedora release) with the knowledge that you may run into some deep level incompatibility that the live/rolling upgrades can not handle. -jef -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
