Hi
What is the plan for supporting upgrades from one release to another? fedup still doesn't have a GUI and GNOME Software doesn't seem to have any integration for prompting users to perform the upgrade when a new release is available.
Rahul
On Sep 11, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
Hi
What is the plan for supporting upgrades from one release to another? fedup still doesn't have a GUI and GNOME Software doesn't seem to have any integration for prompting users to perform the upgrade when a new release is available.
Short(er) version: Seems a bit late for a GUI app if there isn't one already in progress. Is it correct that fedup will convert F20 to F21:Workstation only? And that F21:Server and Cloud will require clean installs?
Gnome Software's updates, and fedup upgrades both leverage systemd "offline system updates" so it's possible there could be one "Upgrade to Fedora 21" option in Software. The caveat there is, it's a bit of a leap of faith. The user doesn't get an obvious "next step" until they restart and see the "fedup" option in the GRUB menu: assuming they haven't changed their GRUB behavior from our default, and haven't hidden the menu! Here they can continue to boot Fedora 20 by choosing the previous kernel, or choose the Fedora 21 Upgrade (fedup) option to get an upgrade.
We should have some consensus on whether the grub menu default should be Fedora 20 (do not do the upgrade by default), or the Fedora 21 Upgrade (fedup) option. Or maybe we modify grub.cfg to change the grub menu timeout so it hangs out a bit longer than usual; and reset it as part of a successful fedup upgrade.
Extra info:
Neither Workstation PRD nor Tech Spec provides very clear guidance. The PRD only mentions "upgrades" and the Tech Spec only mentions "updates".
The vernacular I'm familiar with: updates are minor version bug and security fixes, maybe some new features but maintaining API/ABI compatibility. Upgrades are major version changes (pretty much every binary on the system is going to be replaced), e.g. Fedora 20 to Fedora 21 is an upgrade.
Workstation Technical Spec on "updates" http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Technical_Specification#Software_u...
- "gnome-software will use PackageKit with the hawkey backend to obtain and install software updates for packaged applications and the OS itself. The recommendation for applications is to use the PackageKit APIs to interact with the underlying packaging system."
The Tech Spec probably should address "upgrades" specifically.
Workstation PRD on "upgrades" http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD
- "should give a result that is the same as an original install" (this is really hard to do; but I think it's a good goal and principle to have) - "we want to offer an easy way for users to roll-back such upgrades" (we don't have this for either updates or upgrades right now for Workstation, as it depends on things we aren't using by default: ostree, LVM thinp snapshot, or Btrfs snapshots)
Chris Murphy
On Sun, 2014-09-14 at 17:38 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
Seems a bit late for a GUI app if there isn't one already in progress.
Yes, but this doesn't have to be ready for the release of F21. Ideally we would come up with something prior to the release of F22, though. Command-line upgrades are a terrible user experience.
On Sun, 2014-09-14 at 17:38 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
The user doesn't get an obvious "next step" until they restart and see the "fedup" option in the GRUB menu
I think we should not show the GRUB menu at all during upgrades.
On Sep 14, 2014, at 6:28 PM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Sun, 2014-09-14 at 17:38 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
Seems a bit late for a GUI app if there isn't one already in progress.
Yes, but this doesn't have to be ready for the release of F21. Ideally we would come up with something prior to the release of F22, though. Command-line upgrades are a terrible user experience.
It's not a warm fuzzy, but as a biased mainly OS X user I don't find fedup to be a terrible UI/UX. It's just non-obvious. I'm not invited or encouraged to do the upgrade. I'm the sole initiator.
So if it were to appear in Software, this is kind of a new thing. How does the whole mirroring thing come into play, and what delays are there in this package appearing in Software? Can it be triggered pretty much dead nuts on release day? Or are we talking about it maybe appearing before release day? Or a week after release day?
On Sun, 2014-09-14 at 17:38 -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
The user doesn't get an obvious "next step" until they restart and see the "fedup" option in the GRUB menu
I think we should not show the GRUB menu at all during upgrades.
You won't get an argument from me. My recollection is the GRUB menu was hidden up until Fedora (hand waive) 15/16 when we moved to GRUB2.
Is there a way for the "Fedora Upgrade package" to communicate to Software (and other desktop package installers) that this particular package type needs to be presented in a unique way? Making it more obvious this isn't the typical update?
Chris Murphy
This bug is relevant: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=712149
Doesn't look like a lot of thought has gone into this yet.
On 16 September 2014 00:29, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
This bug is relevant: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=712149 Doesn't look like a lot of thought has gone into this yet.
I agree; this needs a lot more UX work. I think working with the fedup guys is the only way we can support this on Fedora; I've got burned by trying to make upgrades "easy" in the past a couple of times.
Richard
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On 09/14/2014 07:38 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Sep 11, 2014, at 2:20 PM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
Hi
What is the plan for supporting upgrades from one release to another? fedup still doesn't have a GUI and GNOME Software doesn't seem to have any integration for prompting users to perform the upgrade when a new release is available.
Short(er) version: Seems a bit late for a GUI app if there isn't one already in progress. Is it correct that fedup will convert F20 to F21:Workstation only? And that F21:Server and Cloud will require clean installs?
No. Upgrades from Fedora 20 will be non-Productized. In practice, this means they will get fedora-release-standard (instead of fedora-release-workstation, etc.) and they will end up with the 'standard' version of any config package that varies between Products (currently, this is only firewalld).
Users that want their system to *become* Workstation will want to run 'yum swap fedora-release-standard fedora-release-workstation' and then 'yum install @^fedora-workstation-environment'
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