Re: Possible future apt changes: release upgrades

David Kalnischkies <[email protected]> Tue, 3 Mar 2026 14:31:36 +0100
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.apt.devel
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Am Tue, Mar 03, 2026 at 11:08:02AM +0100, schrieb Thomas Goirand:
> d-private is probably not the best place to discuss this (feel free to move
> this discussion somewhere else), but...

You could always move to [email protected] with ANY questions or what not.
I just did with this reply, so if anyone replies please drop d-private
(And note that I changed the subject for reasons)


> > Release Upgrades
> > - the `apt release-upgrade` command
> 
> What is this apt release-upgrade command doing? I really hope you're not
> trying to push into Debian the upgrade command Ubuntu has, as we should
> *not* rely on this type of thing to upgrade to stable+1. Why? Because we
> also maintain testing and unstable, and with these, it makes no sense.

Well, yes and no. I could imagine various different things that could be
changed/better/… in a stable to stable+1 upgrade that do not apply to
testing/unstable like:
- Where is it written that you have to manually adapt your sources
  configuration with a text editor (graphical of course) that you
  have to start as root to refer to stable+1 instead of stable ?
  I mean… seriously?
- If we recommend to run certain commands in order to avoid problems,
  (like, first upgrade to latest point release, than do release upgrade)
  why can we not just run them automatically in that order ?

All the way up to things that are more prominent in a release upgrade,
but apply equally well in unstable as well like:
- the release notes, Debian.NEWS, … describe that some configuration is
  phased out. Just that the folks who should read that usually don't
  (or are not experienced enough to know it even applies to them)
  and so are surprised by the next upgrade "surprisingly" breaking their
  system.
  (I got a LOT of feedback for the non-free-firmware split warning hack,
   same for the FTP decommission earlier, that in a world where everyone
   reads news, nobody would have seen.)
- package foo (which provides a world-accessible security bugged server
  component of course) is unmaintained and dropped from Debian. Maybe it
  even has a 80% compatible alternative (or twenty). We hide this info
  in the removal request to ftpmasters and hope that users will eventually
  figure it out. Maybe. Lets hope they just reinstall.

I am sure you can think of a few more things that might not even apply
to the super-human-like system administrators that Debian developers are
by definition, but some lesser beings might find helpful anyhow.


Not sure if ANY of this is what Julian means with this bullet point.
Not sure if ALL of this is apt or shouldn't better be done by <not-apt
that doesn't exist (yet) but probably should(n't)>.

I have a wild imagination sometimes. (Not today, these are just mild
examples. I could go on for days, but who has the time.)

What I know is that we had talked about one or the other over the last
decade at least, but sadly… <todo: let a simple markov chain trained
on mails by open source maintainers complete that sentence>.


Best regards

David Kalnischkies
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