[conspire] Fwd: wheezy is OUT. tonight. Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: BAD meeting for 2013-05 (and mini-installfests, and ...)

[Tony Godshall]

On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting Tony Godshall (togo at of.net):
>
>> All I meant was that if you are in the habit of apt-get update &&
>> apt-get upgrade and you point to stable, and you are not following the
>> news of releases closely you can find the earth suddenly shifting
>> beneath your feet.
>
> For values of 'earth shifting beneath your feet' approximating a major
> semi-automated upgrade, to be sure.
>
> However, did it _work_?  If it had significant problems and you weren't
> six months or more out of date when you started, then you have a big
> complaint against the Debian Release Manager and the developers
> collectively.  If not, then you're getting what it says on the tin,
> i.e., a release-based distribution driven by a semi-automated
> maintenance regime.
>
> You might say 'It'd be nice if apt-get were to pop up a message saying
> "Hey, user!  This is going to be a long download and upgrade session
> because a release has come out.  Continue (y/N)?"'
>
> That might be nice.  However, honestly you get the next best thing if
> you suddenly notice that 100 pages are being fetched instead of the
> normal three or four, because at that point you cdan Ctrl-C break,
> saying 'Oh, I guess there's been a release, and I want to do this when I
> have more time.'
>
> apt-get and dpkg are pretty much idempotent, i.e., you can break and
> then later resubmit the same commands and the tools will still do The
> Right Thing.

In modern times it did Just Work.  Which is cool.  There was breakage
in one of the older versions, and I'm sure we all have habits born out of
a bad experience at some time back, and give advise on that basis
intending to help others avoid the pain, which may no longer be relevant.

And yes I 100% agree that reviewing what apt-get or aptitude is going
to do is important... I've seen people get in the habit of apt-get -y ...
and I would advise all to DON'T DO THAT.  Review the changes it
proposes.  Which is particularly important if your sources.list says
"stable".

Tony