On Sep 11, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi
What is the plan for supporting upgrades from one release to another? fedup still
doesn't have a GUI and GNOME Software doesn't seem to have any integration for
prompting users to perform the upgrade when a new release is available.
Short(er) version:
Seems a bit late for a GUI app if there isn't one already in progress. Is it correct
that fedup will convert F20 to F21:Workstation only? And that F21:Server and Cloud will
require clean installs?
Gnome Software's updates, and fedup upgrades both leverage systemd "offline
system updates" so it's possible there could be one "Upgrade to Fedora
21" option in Software. The caveat there is, it's a bit of a leap of faith. The
user doesn't get an obvious "next step" until they restart and see the
"fedup" option in the GRUB menu: assuming they haven't changed their GRUB
behavior from our default, and haven't hidden the menu! Here they can continue to boot
Fedora 20 by choosing the previous kernel, or choose the Fedora 21 Upgrade (fedup) option
to get an upgrade.
We should have some consensus on whether the grub menu default should be Fedora 20 (do not
do the upgrade by default), or the Fedora 21 Upgrade (fedup) option. Or maybe we modify
grub.cfg to change the grub menu timeout so it hangs out a bit longer than usual; and
reset it as part of a successful fedup upgrade.
Extra info:
Neither Workstation PRD nor Tech Spec provides very clear guidance. The PRD only mentions
"upgrades" and the Tech Spec only mentions "updates".
The vernacular I'm familiar with: updates are minor version bug and security fixes,
maybe some new features but maintaining API/ABI compatibility. Upgrades are major version
changes (pretty much every binary on the system is going to be replaced), e.g. Fedora 20
to Fedora 21 is an upgrade.
Workstation Technical Spec on "updates"
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Technical_Specification#Softwar...
- "gnome-software will use PackageKit with the hawkey backend to obtain and install
software updates for packaged applications and the OS itself. The recommendation for
applications is to use the PackageKit APIs to interact with the underlying packaging
system."
The Tech Spec probably should address "upgrades" specifically.
Workstation PRD on "upgrades"
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD
- "should give a result that is the same as an original install" (this is really
hard to do; but I think it's a good goal and principle to have)
- "we want to offer an easy way for users to roll-back such upgrades" (we
don't have this for either updates or upgrades right now for Workstation, as it
depends on things we aren't using by default: ostree, LVM thinp snapshot, or Btrfs
snapshots)
Chris Murphy