Disable partial upgrades during a development release

Thanks for your bugreport.

This sounds like we should aim towards making them better by better protecting the user. The partial upgrade feature was added because of user requests, but I think its worthwhile having a much stronger checking before stuff gets removed.

I concur: in the cases where partial upgrades are currently triggered, having an option to continue the upgrade but without removing packages would be a good idea. It is unclear to me what exactly a partial upgrade does, though.

mpt, can you consider what would replace the partial upgrade during development?

I presume we want to either (A) refuse to do anything and just tell the user to use apt-get dist-upgrade or (B) add support in the "Updates Available" pane for showing the to-be-removed packages (probably in the style of your spec for release upgrading).

Now that Software Updater recognizes Replaces: (bug 1038113), can we assume that all cases where you'd be prompted for a partial upgrade are either temporary glitches, or cases where it would be unsafe to update?

I don't think so. That commit handles a very specific case. The new package has to set all three of Provides, Conflicts, and Replaces. Breaks isn't recognized, and I imagine that there are common churn situations in a development release where Provides is not specified.

cjwatson, as the author of that patch, can you comment on the above?

I doubt it's sufficient. It's a step on the way, but I am reasonably sure there will be a significant number of other cases not yet handled. My understanding is that disabling partial upgrades prematurely will have an effect roughly equivalent to forcing people to semantics along the lines of 'apt-get upgrade', including forever forgetting about new Recommends, so - even though the dialog is horrible - I can't advise making this change yet.

By the way, Breaks is deliberately not there because its usual purpose is more to force newer versions than to force removals. The main thing I expect not to yet be handled is cases where a chain of packages is forced out due to a C/R/P set. (And yes, it's possible that I shouldn't have included Provides in this test; I was being conservative.)

I've amended the code in bzr to require only Conflicts+Replaces. My concern about dependency chains (e.g. new-package Conflicts+Replaces: foo; bar Depends: foo) stands.

So we need a confirmation alert listing the removals, then? Okay, specification updated. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwarePackageOperations?action=diff&rev2=22&rev1=21>

The partial upgrade is required if you run the development version. the pure dependency definitions of the packages are not enough.

we could argue if not every upgrade should be a partial upgrade.

Matthew Paul Thomas <email address hidden> schrieb:

>So we need a confirmation alert listing the removals, then? Okay,
>specification updated.
><https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwarePackageOperations?action=diff&rev2=22&rev1=21>
>
>** Changed in: update-manager (Ubuntu)
> Assignee: Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) => (unassigned)
>
>** Also affects: aptdaemon (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
>** Description changed:
>
> More and more people test devel release of Ubuntu. While we give
> adequate warnings on the risks of running ubuntu+1 releases sometimes
> it's not enough.
>
> update-manager has a concept of a "partial upgrade" which seems to be
> more trouble than it's worth. Perhaps give the user a more descriptive
> set of options, something like:
>
> a) Wait until later until the archive works itself out.
> b) Install stuff, but don't remove anything
>c) Do a partial upgrade (and perhaps a scary warning like apt does when
>you try to remove glibc. "Yes, I recognize that I could explode my
>machine, do it."
>
> Or perhaps something like "Something bad has happened, go use apt-get"
> or something that makes it clear that update-manager is confused.
>+
>+ <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdates#Installing>: "The selected
>+ updates should then install with the standard interface."
>+
>+ <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwarePackageOperations#updating>: "If the
>+ new package conflicts with installed packages, a confirmation alert
>+ should appear: ‘“{title}” can’t be updated unless these items are
>+ removed:’, with “Cancel” and “Update & Install” buttons, but
>otherwise
>+ identical to the equivalent alert when installing a new package."
>
>--
>You received this bug notification because you are a member of
>Aptdaemon
>Developers, which is subscribed to aptdaemon in Ubuntu.
>https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/430197
>
>Title:
> Disable partial upgrades during a development release
>
>To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/aptdaemon/+bug/430197/+subscriptions

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oh i missed the previous discussion.

Matthew Paul Thomas <email address hidden> schrieb:

>So we need a confirmation alert listing the removals, then? Okay,
>specification updated.
><https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwarePackageOperations?action=diff&rev2=22&rev1=21>
>
>** Changed in: update-manager (Ubuntu)
> Assignee: Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) => (unassigned)
>
>** Also affects: aptdaemon (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
>** Description changed:
>
> More and more people test devel release of Ubuntu. While we give
> adequate warnings on the risks of running ubuntu+1 releases sometimes
> it's not enough.
>
> update-manager has a concept of a "partial upgrade" which seems to be
> more trouble than it's worth. Perhaps give the user a more descriptive
> set of options, something like:
>
> a) Wait until later until the archive works itself out.
> b) Install stuff, but don't remove anything
>c) Do a partial upgrade (and perhaps a scary warning like apt does when
>you try to remove glibc. "Yes, I recognize that I could explode my
>machine, do it."
>
> Or perhaps something like "Something bad has happened, go use apt-get"
> or something that makes it clear that update-manager is confused.
>+
>+ <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdates#Installing>: "The selected
>+ updates should then install with the standard interface."
>+
>+ <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwarePackageOperations#updating>: "If the
>+ new package conflicts with installed packages, a confirmation alert
>+ should appear: ‘“{title}” can’t be updated unless these items are
>+ removed:’, with “Cancel” and “Update & Install” buttons, but
>otherwise
>+ identical to the equivalent alert when installing a new package."
>
>--
>You received this bug notification because you are a member of
>Aptdaemon
>Developers, which is subscribed to aptdaemon in Ubuntu.
>https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/430197
>
>Title:
> Disable partial upgrades during a development release
>
>To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/aptdaemon/+bug/430197/+subscriptions

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