Tech Spec: Software Updates

[Matthias Clasen]

On Wed, 2014-02-26 at 14:25 +0100, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
> Hi,
> sorry for bringing up something that has probably been discussed here
> several times already.
> 
> I went across the Software Updates section:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Technical_Specification#Software_updates
> 
> It's not very descriptive, but I guess by using PackageKit we will also
> be using offline updates.
> I've told been told theoretical issues of online updates many times, I
> don't need anyone to repeat that.
> 
> The fact is that the offline updates have been received mostly
> negatively by users from what I read on the Internet or hear from people
> at events. But what really worries me is a much higher number of users
> with broken package databases or even whole systems asking for help on
> forums. When we got down to the problem we found out the user
> interrupted offline updates (they took too long, or they even got stuck
> and they didn't even know the system was being updated).
> 
> The offline updates as they are done now seem to be confusing to them. 
> I see more and more often advices from experienced users such as "if you
> want reliable updates, use yum update" which is probably not the kind of
> solution we want for workstation users.
> 
> I know we're not switching back to online updates, but we might want to
> reassess how they're done now. Maybe making more obvious that the system
> is being updated and the process is not yet over, or excluding packages
> that really don't need offline update so that the update time is much
> shorter?
> 
> I must admit that I also have started using "yum update" although I
> always used the gui tool on my laptop as the most convenient way to
> update.

First of all - I don't think you should feel bad for using yum update
(I'm doing it myself when a reboot is inconvenient) - the point is that
you know what you're doing, and can deal with the fallout.

As has already been mentioned, offline updates will hopefully be less
jarring in f21. Using hawkey should speed things up, and we've improved
the feedback at least a bit. I feel that we can probably still do better
(take some inspiration from the fedup plymouth integration). We're also
adding support for offline updates to the gnome-shell poweroff dialog
and add support for 'update & shutdown', which has been frequently
requested.

Also worth stressing again that offline updates for everything are not
the ideal end-state. If applications are separated enough from the OS,
it will be safe (and very desirable) to allow updating them online. For
the OS itself, we'll probably always want a reboot into the updated
system. If we get something like ostree in place, we can make this a lot
less jarring too - preparing the updated filesystem image can happen
online while you are happily reading your mail or browsing the web.
You'll automatically get the new system the next time you reboot. And
the older system will still be available if you run into trouble.