UsrMove feature breaking "yum upgrade" upgrades from older releases to F17?

[Peter Robinson]

Hi All,

So I saw a rpm update and a number of other builds today when dealing
with various packaging bits. Checking the update [1] and reading the
attached bug [2] I was a little shocked to find that "yum upgrade"
between releases would be explicitly broken due to this feature.

Yes, I know that it's not officially recommended as a means of
upgrading and never been QAed it has been generally supported and
expected to work [4] for as long as I can remember.

The thing that is annoying me is that this change has not been
explicitly mentioned in the "Feature" [3], it does no appear in the
FAQ on the feature and I don't remember it ever being bought up in the
discussions about the feature although I admit I probably have missed
some of the discussion. Has this side effect of the feature been
discussed at all? Can someone point me to a thread?

Personally I'm not bothered about the location of binaries and don't
wish to reopen that discussion, but yum upgrade is a feature I do use
regularly as I'm sure a lot of others do as well. I feel it's a little
disingenuous of the feature owners not to bring this component of the
feature up, advertise it properly and include a large mention of it in
the "Release Notes" section of the feature as it's surely something
that is a FAQ and should be in the release notes section.

I'm also very perplexed why this major change is landing so close to
the freeze and branch with less than two weeks to Freeze and Branch
and the feature isn't actually even in rawhide yet [5] as all the
packages are still being built on a separate tag. Why do core features
always have to land just before the branch to ensure we have mass
breakage and the guarantee of a slip? This sort of change should be
landing on rawhide just after the branch to ensure 9 months of
development!

Regards,
Peter

[1] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2012-0912/rpm-4.9.1.2-4.fc16.1
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=760996
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove
[4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Upgrading_Fedora_using_yum
[5] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=295486