Proposal: Rolling Release

[Rahul Sundaram]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>> Michael Cronenworth wrote:
>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>> Subject: Proposal: Rolling Release
>>> From: Eric Springer <erikina at gmail.com>
>>> To: fedora-devel-list at redhat.com
>>> Date: 11/10/2008 07:42 AM
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts? Flames? Ideas?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually, what Fedora needs already exists: preupgrade
>>>
>>> It just needs to be turned into a mandatory update tool with 
>>> PackageKit.  Joe Enduser needs to be able to click "Update Me!" and 
>>> go from Fedora 9 to Fedora 10 with a single click.
>>
>> Already implemented. PackageKit hooks up to Preupgrade and you would 
>> get a desktop blurb letting you know that when a subsequent release of 
>> Fedora is available.
> 
> The real missing piece is 'undo' when you find out that a change in the 
> new version breaks something that you need.  Does anyone know if that 
> actually works on systems using conary (i.e. can you back up a major 
> revision)?

Not feasible for RPM due to pre/post scripts. The rudimentary roll back 
support in RPM has actually been removed in 4.6. It probably needs the 
underlying filesytem to support snapshots. Something like btrfs needs to 
be in place first.

> If that's not feasible, how about something else, useful in its own 
> right: a migration tool that would let you move an existing system to 
> different hardware or in/out of VMware/virtualbox, etc., preferably with 
> the ability to keep everything but the system partitions intact and 
> shared.  Then when it is time to upgrade, you could migrate into a 
> virtualbox image or spare machine, upgrade that, then after testing your 
> apps and usage, migrate it to the host hardware.
> 
> Or if that's too complicated, how about an option to pre-allocate a 
> spare system partition during the initial install for the next version 
> and have that upgrade process give you a dual-boot system so you have a 
> way back.  Then the next upgrade would rotate back to the first 
> partition, and so on.

File RFE's in http://bugzilla.redhat.com. Otherwise it will likely just 
get lost in a long thread.

Rahul