Preupgrade-assistant assessment tool for upgrades in Fedora (does NOT replace FedUp)

[Petr Hracek]

Hi folks,

I would like to briefly announced preupgrade-assistant as a tool for 
assess system
before an upgrade by FedUp.
Preupgrade-assistant is available since F22 [1] and can be used only for 
upgrades from major version to major version +1.
It uses oscap project [4] and especially SCE (Script Check Engine) for 
assess the system [5].

Currently now it is not needed to install them before an FedUp.
But could be useful after the upgrade. We will see in the future if 
FedUp will call API of preupgrade-assistant.

What preupgrade-assistant does?
1) It *does not* replace *FedUp* but can enhanced upgrades.
2) It does *NOT* modify upgraded system before the upgrade.
3) It executes set of contents and informs user if package is somehow
changed in the next release and what steps are needed for proper work on 
the next major version.
4) Because of preupgrade-assistant needs to have access all files 
therefore it needs to be executed under root.
5) Information gathered by preupgrade-assistant are stored in 
/root/preupgrade directory.
6) After a whole assessment user see a report with table what potential 
problems could arise after the upgrade.

If user knows that he can fix the problem after the upgrade then he can 
create a postupgrade script
which can do that automatically.
This issue needs to called from FedUp after the upgrade and will be 
implemented later on.
Pull request to FedUp is going to be created soon.

Contents are optional of course and it depends on user if he wants to 
create it.
If user thinks that contents is suitable then he can follow up packaging 
guidelines [2].
User has not create a XML file but 3 files like
- INI file
- Bash or Python script for checking the system
- text file how to solve the problem after the upgrade.

Preupgrade-assistant has been presented on DevConf2015 [3].

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Preupgrade_Assistant
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:PreupgradeAssistant
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7SFtE_2TrY
[4] http://www.open-scap.org/page/Documentation
[5] http://www.open-scap.org/page/SCE

-- 
Petr Hracek
Software Engineer
Developer Experience
Red Hat, Inc
Mob: +420777056169
email: phracek at redhat.com