On Sun, Oct 02, 2022 at 03:53:00PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: > >What's the plan for upgraded systems with an existing /etc/apt/sources.list. > >Will the new n-f-f section added on upgrades automatically(if non-free was > >enabled before)? > So this is the one bit that I don't think we currently have a good > answer for. We've never had a specific script to run on upgrades (like > Ubuntu do), so this kind of potentially breaking change doesn't really > have an obvious place to be fixed. > Obviously we'll need to mention this in the release notes for > bookworm. Should we maybe talk about adding an upgrade helper tool? I heartily endorse ubuntu-release-upgrader, it has been useful in addressing uncounted upgrade issues over the years and I think something like this would be a nice addition to Debian as well. Two caveats: - Despite this being the sanctioned upgrade path in Ubuntu for over a decade, every single cycle we get bug reports from users who have run into issues because they have bypassed it and done the manual sed /etc/apt/sources.list && apt dist-upgrade. So in Debian where this has been the norm for /two/ decades, I would not expect this to substantially reduce the error rate in the first release where such a mechanism is introduced. (After all, whether telling users to use a new upgrader tool or telling them to manually add a component to sources.list, they will have to read the release notes to know about it!) - There are always some users that end up with buggy systems after upgrade despite using the supported interface because they upgrade to the devel release, and the release-upgrader is still under development up until release so they miss out on quirks being applied - and there is no interface for users to replay the quirks that they missed out on. Don't repeat the same design mistake. In the absence of a release-upgrader, the only way I see to automate this on upgrade would be to handle it in the maintainer scripts of either base-files (which I don't think the base-files maintainer would like) or apt. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer https://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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