PackageKit and default update strategy

Kevin Kofler kevin.kofler at chello.at
Fri Mar 14 20:29:18 UTC 2008


Robin Norwood <rnorwood <at> redhat.com> writes:
> updates are available.  Some people have suggested applying security
> updates automatically as the default configuration.  I personally like
> the idea, but I suspect that some people will not like this behavior as
> the default.

I'd suggest defaulting to applying _all_ updates automatically.

I'm not sure filtering for security updates only is really ready for the kind 
of user who needs autoupdates. (I expect experienced users to turn those 
notifications off immediately no matter how they're set up. For example, I 
don't even have yum-updatesd _installed_ on my computer running Fedora 8, let 
alone running.) Some problems which can happen:
* security updates can accidentally depend on non-security updates, and not 
always in a way which is caught by RPM - none of the developers really tests 
security updates only,
* occasionally, a security update causes a regression. The regression fix is 
usually pushed as a regular bugfix update (the security team won't even allow 
such a fix to go out as a security update, at least in one such case they told 
the maintainer to refile it as a regular bugfix), leaving the users only 
applying security updates with a regression they wouldn't be suffering if they 
applied all updates.

        Kevin Kofler




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