[arch-general] Roadmap for user-intervention upgrades [was: Still Glibc problems]

[Manolo Martínez]

On 07/20/12 at 03:27pm, Norbert Zeh wrote:
> I
> think the reason why you are having a much more serious issue is that it seems
> you haven't updated your system in a long time.  So now you're running into
> dealing with two slightly tricky upgrades (filesystem + glibc) at the same time.

I've had no problems with filesystem, /lib -> /usr/lib or, today, grub
-> grub2. I have at best a tenuous grasp of the issues involved in these
three changes, so I can only consider myself very lucky that I'm not in the
quandary others seem to be.

I know, though, of enthusiastic archers who have resented the
problems that have resulted from some of these changes, and feel less
enthusiastic about archlinux now. I guess there is an inherent tension
between the rolling-distro concept and KISS: if you want an up-to-date
system you are bound to change things that work (which is hardly KISS).

I was wondering if the following could be useful to minimize the impact
of these, more trepidant pacman -Syu's: archlinux could publish a
roadmap of user-intervention upgrades well in advance: we will do this
in Q1, that in Q2, and that other thing in Q3. This way users could, for
example, plan their upgrades so as not to have to deal with two such
problematic migrations at the same time.

It would also be nice to know a bit more of the rationale behind the
moves. I'm sure that they are all for the best, and I trust arch
decision-makers (and one can find out more about the changes by reading
blogs and forum discussions), but still it'd be good to have a small FAQ posted to
arch-general before each of the biggish moves.

Manolo