Bug#947860: release-notes: Sec 4.3 preparing sources.list omits explicit statement of key change
Package: release-notes
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
When upgrading from Jessie to Stretch, I was confused about when I was
supposed to actually edit the sources.list file. I found section 4.3
"Preparing APT source-list files" unclear on when to perform this
critical step. I investigated the apt-get dist-upgrade command, but it
does not edit sources.list for me. I also found earlier mention that I
should be careful that all deb lines should mention "jessie" and later
(in section 4.4 "Upgrading packages") the comment "double-check that the
APT source entries [...] refer either to ''stretch'' or to ''stable''".
Apparently, between these two I was supposed to edit the file to replace
jessie with stretch.
The corresponding text for Buster is about the same in this respect.
I think adding a summary sentence to this effect at the beginning of
section 4.3 would be sufficient. While I've used Debian, and Ubuntu
before that, for years, my exposure to apt/aptitude has been sporadic
and doubtless my mental model of its operation is askew. Making the
obvious steps more explicit would help less experienced users with this
upgrade process.
Perhaps changing the first sentence of 4.3 to:
Before starting the upgrade you must reconfigure APT's source-list
files (/etc/apt/sources.list and files under /etc/apt/sources.list.d/)
to add sources for stretch <release name> and remove sources for jessie
<old release name>.
Thank you for your consideration.
Ted Anderson
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.11
APT prefers oldoldstable
APT policy: (500, 'oldoldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
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