Re: Reading of release notes (was Re: Still on stretch, getting ready for bullseye)
On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 11:26:18AM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> On Wed 18 Aug 2021 at 07:39:26 (-0400), The Wanderer wrote:
> > On 2021-08-17 at 13:36, Brian wrote:
> > > On Tue 17 Aug 2021 at 16:00:57 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> >
> > >> Do the update to Buster - take it as slow as you need to. Bring it
> > >> bang up to date.
> > >>
> > >> For the Buster to Bullseye -
> > >>
> > >> READ RELEASE NOTES :)
> > >
> > > Of course! Do users not do this as a standard procedure? :)
> >
> > I don't - because I don't upgrade from one stable release to another; I
> > track testing, continuously, throughout the development cycle. As such,
> > there is no point in the release cycle at which it makes sense for me to
> > read the release notes; at the start of the release cycle they don't
> > exist yet, so there's nothing for me to read, and by the time they're
> > finalized and the release is ready, I'm already fully upgraded.
>
> That seems perfectly reasonable: the issues that get included in the
> Release Notes also get discussed here at the time they become issues.
> And it also means that you never Upgrade from one release to the next.
>
I've just spent the best part of my weekend hammering out installs as
part of the media team. I'm one of these people that tends to run stable
Debian - I don't bother reading release notes as a general rule if I
think I know what I'm doing - meh, documentation, who needs it :)
I've spent a chunk of time on the #debian IRC channels. Lots of people
hitting a difference between apt-get and apt behaviour as the labels
changed. It turns out that apt-get apparently requires you to take
action and approve something, apt just does it. Query raised several
times: it's in the release notes if anybody bothered to check - that's
the reason why apt is recommended as far as I can see.
This time round, the /etc/apt/sources.list files have changed for the
security repo line. Again, lots of people asking the same sort of
question. If you're doing two full upgrades - go back a couple of years
and look to see what the first set of notes tell you because you will
have forgotten - that was my rationale for saying to read the release
notes in screaming capitals. It was a more visible reminder.
If anyone chooses to run testing continuously - they know the security
status, they know to expect huge churn just after a release / when a
new version of GNOME / KDE is being assembled and there are library
transitions and so on. Each to their own for something like this: there's
no "royal road to Debian" that is the one true way to do things.
> > It always bothers me to see "read the release notes!" hammered on as a
> > reasonable thing to expect users to do, in terms which presents users
> > who fail to do so as unreasonable. It probably does make sense in the
> > relatively limited (if also probably relatively common) case of
> > upgrading from (old)stable to stable, but it is certainly not so
> > universal a matter as to make failing to do it so inappropriate that
> > hammering on it in such absolute terms becomes appropriate.
>
> So exactly what's /bothering/ you? As a bystander.
As a bystander, it bugged me far more today to see someone banging on
a configuration file as root today without taking a copy beforehand.
[Or in fact generally not taking a backup of a config file before
you rewrite it: I'm a coward in the light of bad experiences and still
screw things up after 20++ years of routine daily Debian use].
> Cheers,
> David.
>
Thanks to all for sharing perspectives.
All the very best, as ever,
Andy Cater
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