On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 10:28, Patrick Goetz <pgo...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote: >> Subject: Re: Evolution & Ubuntu 10.04 LTS >> From: Sebastien Bacher <seb...@ubuntu.com> >> Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:02:32 +0100 >> To: ubuntu-devel-disc...@lists.ubuntu.com >> > >> Ubuntu has been bitten by upgrading to new versions which were rewritten >> in the past and we have learnt, the decision has been made to stay on a >> version which is not perfect but that we know about rather running to >> use a rewrite in the risk of being stucked with something not ready >> quality and feature wise for a lts. > > > As someone who is now running Lucid Alpha 3 on some production servers > because I absolutely need some features of programs that have been > updated in the last 1.5 years and Karmic is a largely an unusable > disaster, I can see both sides of this argument. > > Why not use something like ubuntu-backports more aggressively to make > everyone happy? > > PPA's are great, but we've already gotten burned once by using the PPA > for a newer version of OpenOffice and having it suddenly disappear a few > months later, throwing the automatic updates on 300 client machines into > disarray. > > Given the speed with which open source software evolves, and given the > need/desire of users to have access to the latest and greatest, it would > be very useful to give users access to the newest versions of such > things as Firefox, Thunderbird, Dia, gimp, OpenOffice, and so on. > Generally these user space programs just work without causing system > level regressions. And it's kind of embarrassing to recommend linux to > a user and have them tell me they like running Windows because "it's a > lot easier to keep Firefox/Thunderbird/etc. up to date" rather than > waiting a year before having access to nifty new features they get > instantaneously on their windows box the day after the package is released. > > Of course there's always the chance of "being bitten" as described > above. To this end, I've been thinking about this for a while and would > like to propose the following solution. Unfortunately implementing > this would require hacking or modifying the current .deb architecture. > The basic idea is to make new packages available through > ubuntu-backports (or ubuntu-unstable or ubuntu-experimental or something > like this) but with a simple mechanism for backing out of the upgrade if > it doesn't work out so well. For example, suppose Ubuntu X.Y ships with > gumptaculer version 1.7.3 and a few months later gumptaculer version 2.0 > is released with much fanfare, front page articles in Infoworld, Linux > Journal, lwn.net, and breathless reviews across the blogosphere. Users > start clamoring for the features of gumptacular 2.0, not knowing how > they ever lived without them. So, > > apt-get install gumptacular/ubuntu-experimental > > installs v. 2.0. Unfortunately it turns out that whenever you run > gumptacular 2.0 on a machine with an nVidia graphics card, the GPU fan > spins out of control and melts the system board. Problem. The > suggested new feature is a way to simply back out of the experimental > update whenever you get bitten: > > apt-revert gumptacular > > would un-install v. 2.0 and re-install v. 1.7.3 -- problem solved and > users will just have to wait until version 2.0.1 is released (shortly). > Understood that there could be lots of complications with > dependencies, but that's why it's called ubuntu-experimental -- the > onus is on the administrator to apply such changes atomically (i.e. one > at a time) so that they can be backed out of without having to unwind a > spaghetti mess of now inter-related dependencies created by updating > several experimental packages at once. If only one package was updated, > then all the dependencies can be reverted, too without compromising the > system. > > > > > > -- > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss >
The apt-revert thing would sure be nice for ppa's too, because if someone installs packages from a ppa and then removes the ppa, it takes some searching to find all the ppa packages and revert them to the official version. ---- Erik B. Andersen -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
