DistUpgraderImprovmentsSpec

Revision 4 as of 2006-10-20 12:39:19

Clear message

Summary

For the Breezy/Dapper upgrade we had (for the first time) a upgrade tool that can do dist-upgrades easily and (mostly) automatically. There is still room for improvement.

Rationale

The new dist-upgrade tool for breezy->dapper upgrades can be improved further.

Scope

Design

The following additional features should be considered:

  • use a already downloaded CD to get packages for the upgrade
  • qt frontend
  • i18n for the upgrade notes

  • a "UpgradeIfInstall" section for packages like nvidia-glx so that the tool refuses to continue if it can't upgrade those packages

  • a mechanism to resolve conflicts if two meta-packages conflict (e.g. ubuntu-desktop/xubuntu-desktop because of the {xubuntu,gnome}-system-tools package)
  • SMART support

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

There should be a way to upgrade to a full new version of Ubuntu - not just upgrading existing packages. For example, I had to explicitely install upstart. People sometime uninstall something that will uninstall a meta-package (for example ubuntu-desktop or ubuntu-minimal)... Dist-upgrading should reinstall the ubuntu metapackages, including artwork. Second, after having upgrade to Edgy RC, I don't seem to benefit from the "Teardown" specification. I suspect that's because there is no package related to this specification (is there any ?). A clean upgrade tool should be able to apply this kind of modification as well. In short, everything should be done so that the user can experience the "real" new version after the dist-upgrade, as if he installed it from scratch.

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