Fedora 7: The Linux Knight in Shining Armor?

Rahul Sundaram sundaram at fedoraproject.org
Mon Jan 22 21:21:55 UTC 2007


Robin Laing wrote:

> You make my point.  As a user I hate the idea of having to do a new 
> install every six months or skip a release and it is once a year.


Yes. I completely understand that. That is something we are trying to 
solve but I dont consider rolling updates as a answer to these issues. 
See below for more details.

> I would prefer that there be an easy upgrade path throughout the year. 
> Thus, the developers can make changes to Z application and have that go 
> out to the Fedora crowd.  Now if there is a major change, such as udev, 
> then this can get complicated but not impossible.  It is possible to 
> upgrade from FC4 to FC6, I have done it.  Now if it was FC4, FC4.1, 
> FC4.2 ... FC6, then the upgrade would have been painless and happen with 
> normal yum updates.  Is yum/rpm smart enough to handle this?

It is not a question of package managers. The problems lie elsewhere. 
For example, no package manager is capable of automatically updating 
from LVM1 to LVM2 format. They are incompatible formats and automatic 
live upgrade just isnt possible or atleast it is outside the scope of 
package managers as such. Now this isnt usually the case and the 
problems with live upgrades using yum can be made better and work is 
being done on that. This would make it far more easier for users to 
upgrade their Fedora systems without moving into a rolling updates model.

* Make sure that every single package always has a proper update path 
and dependencies are resolvable through checks before every package 
release in the updates system. See 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureUpdateSystem

* Possibly decouple the upgrade process from Anaconda. See 
http://barcamp.org/FudconBoston2007#SESSIONS

* Different spins and tools to customize and creative derivatives which 
would ensure that you dont install a whole lot of unnecessary packages 
which affect the chances of a smooth upgrade. See 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureCustomDistro

* Continue to make things that affect a update process a important 
criteria for a release. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA

There are other changes in the pipeline too.


> 
> I can agree that a major change could be a real headache but if the 
> changes are grouped, lets say the move to PATA as part of the kernel 
> upgrade, then most applications can be updated at the same time.  Now, I 
> remember doing a kde update that was massive so why not a change like 
> that.  There is still the testing branch to work things out on.

Not many people are prepared to help out and provide feedback in 
updates-testing. Have you on a regular basis? A KDE update is small 
potatoes compared to other fundamental changes we are making with every 
release. Some of them like in GCC or Glibc requires rebuilding every 
single component in the distribution. If you want such massive changes 
as updates within the same release, you might as well as be running the 
Fedora development tree.

> Is the present system a deal breaker for Fedora?  With the loss of
> legacy support for older versions, it is looking more and more that it 
> could be.

I don't consider it a deal breaker but a rolling release model with 
major changes now and then is just too problematic if you want a 
somewhat robust release. A slightly longer updates cycle might have been 
better as I said elsewhere before. Fedora updates lifetime has increased 
updates lifecyle to two releases. That means previously FC4 received 
main updates till FC6 test 2 was released. Now when F7 is released, it 
would get updates until F9 is releases which is from about 9 months to 
about 13 months. That gives you the ability to completely skip one 
release. If you want a longer lifecycle, you are free to get involved 
and help.

Rahul




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