Benny Amorsen benny+usenet@amorsen.dk wrote:
Bill Nottingham notting@redhat.com writes:
Fedora 8's been out less a year. It has, in that timeframe, received *over 4600 updates*. Fedora 9 has received over 2600 in its current lifetime.
How is upgrading to the next release really that many orders of magnitude more change than this?
The largest difference is that upgrading to the next release is almost an all-or-nothing thing. Incremental upgrades during the release generally
--------- | +--- But by no means always...
affect just one package at a time, so testing is relatively
easy. When you upgrade the whole distribution you change openssl version, and that basically means upgrading everything that could in any way cause trouble, all at once.
Exactly like when OpenSSL is upgraded mid-life of the distribution. And "just rebuild the new stuff over the old distribution" will probably break badly when this happens too.
It is far from impossible, I do it
all the time, but it does need a lot more care.
Care that could better be spent on the /new/ release.
Once OpenSSL gets banished this pain will subside a bit, but it will probably never go away.
/That/ pain might dissapear, others are sure around...
Back in the "good" old days it was libc
causing that problem, but the developers of glibc have done an excellent job of keeping compatibility for many years now.