Is apt really superior to rpm here? rpm complains as well.
You are certainly correct. Apt is is a very good tool to quickly test straight upgrade paths between many different installed apps and versions. By using a virtual machine system you can then recreate a prestine install and try many different combinations in a few days. When there is an issue, things get fixed and so on.
Our QA team tests updates and we fix issues that we get reported but all in all updating is rather complex with so many different installations. I would welcome testing of updates - and any bug reports on these...
I will do my best, if you can tell my boss to work fulltime for you then I can certainly give you some guarantees ;) Update testing is not complex as I see it, but just VERY VERY time consuming. Speaking from experience. Or many eyes will do the trick. But a more systematic approach can certainly give better results. As a QA team I am sure they have loads of other tasks on , especially with the weekly release schedule that we are planning here. This makes it very fast pace. I love it! I will start doing some update consolidation work going to beta2 and file bug reports. Maybe this could be my community task! I do actually enjoy that .... Thanks for taking time and answering all the emails, Andreas!