Re: PackageKit cleanup: Do you use these functions?
On 09/11/2014 15:30, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> Matthias wrote:
>> PackageKit also has support for systemd-based offline-updates for a
>> while now, which downloads updates while the system is running, and
>> installs them in a special mode when the system is rebooting. This
>> should ensure that no breakage happens when running applications are
>> replaced with new versions. This is, however, a completely optional
>> feature, and updates of the system while it is running are still
>> possible with PK.
>> GNOME (and especially GNOME-Software) seems to make more use of
>> offline-updates, so we need to think about supporting it in Debian
>> (main issue is debconf questions, which don't work well during
>> offline-updates). I am not going to push that for Jessie, since it
>> will require some precautions in Apt/the PK aptcc backend. But if you
>> want, you can try it already. (Note that I want to keep this
>> desktop-only, since on servers it does not make that much sense (esp.
>> in case an error happens and the system doesn't recover correctly,
>> which might happen until we have btrfs, which is upstream's plan)).
>
> Please push back hard against this - the offline-updates "feature" is
> a joke. Let's not try to emulate the worst bits of Windows any more
> please.
Well, online updates do break software from time to time on my system.
For system services they usually work fine as they can be restarted by
the upgrade process, however user applications break...
I think it's not realistic to expect upstreams to support online updates
for every application. Once you have plugins or external data, it's hard
to keep working properly after an upgrade.
And at least I would prefer offline updates over my web browser crashing
or shell completion breaking (until re-exec of the shell to be
compatible with plugins).
Ansgar
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