31 Jul
2009
31 Jul
'09
3:05 p.m.
On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:54:33 +0200
Jean-Baptiste Mestelan <mestelan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2009/7/30 Ken Restivo <ken(a)restivo.org>
Well, you don't need to upgrade or can upgrade selectively (not always
of course) until you have some time to fix stuff if it happens to break
something.
Patchage still works for me but it doesn't compile anymore. That's the
most common problem I face, gcc or some important lib or buildtool gets
updated and apps that were written with much older versions won't
compile anymore until someone writes a patch or upstream does something
about it. I tend to notify the maintainer or upstream if I happen to be
the maintainer.
Linux audio stuff moves fast, and works better
with rolling releases,
This was also the point made in a recent thread ('Audio distribution
proposal') ; I bought the idea enough to give ArchLinux +
archaudio.repo a try. And this worked pleasantly well : in a few
hours' time, I could set up a fast and lean system, with good
performance for the main audio apps.
Still, a few updates later, I got to think again about this 'rollling'
model : does the constant upgrading not mean that you are constantly
introducing instability into your system ?
For instance : last month, an update broke 'bash-completion' ; this
week, I found out that 'patchage' was no longer working (is it due to
this recent 'boost' lib update ? ) ... These are small things, but
which prove distracting when you just would have liked to sit down and
make some music ... On the other hand, rolling updates imply that changes
happen
gradually, which allows you to determine what particular package
update caused the problem, and fix accordingly. Well, if you have a
good idea of package dependencies, and if you indeed upgrade
gradually.
So, this brings an other question : what is a good frequency for
updates ? I remember that on Gentoo, it was better to sync the system
frequently, as a two-month-late update could result in hard-to-solve
conflicts. This seems less of a problem in Arch Linux ? (no flamebait
intended)
Personally I upgrade very frequently and few stuff broke so far. I
haven't tried a long update cycle yet but I bet a number of people do
that as well, I'd ask on IRC, forums or mailinglists about their
experience. Afaik many have used gentoo before.
I am mostly thinking aloud here, but would welcome
your experience on
the matter, as I am having a hard time figuring out what a good
process would consist in ; probably, it would involve a rolling system
+ carefully controlled updates, and the ability to rollback updates ?
About this last bit, the Remasterys backup utility included in AVLinux
is a wonderful addition. It only works for Debian/Ubuntu systems
though, ... and I do not know how easily every package manager
provides the ability to downgrade ...
Here are a few relevant links concerning Arch :
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=71987
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrade_packages
I don't know if/how a rollback/downgrade is possible on Arch Linux but
at least for packages that I built myself I keep the packages of one or
two versions back, case the new package doesn't work as expected.
Regards,
Philipp