Hello,
For me meaning of upgrade is simply -- yeah, it is very easy in words...
True :-).
user should upgrade system and everything should work as before, The holy grail eh ? that 's **a hell lot** of work.
Cristian, I am aware of this. I am just pointing out the aim. It is the aim, right?
Examples: opensuse dropped smbfs package some time ago, and this done silently, when you try to use smbfs... because it was not needed anymore..
What do you mean by "not needed"? There is no other way I can connect to samba servers. Luckily other people have exactly the same problem so after some googling I found out how to put smbfs back to my system. So there is need to connect to samba servers and smbfs is the key (I tried cifs).
or do you expect we carry obsolete stuff forever ?
This example is not about obsolete software per se, there is no other (newer) software I can use.
a) let's say user works with OS X.Y with package P installed older than the basic package from this OS version (example opensuse 10.2 and cups 1.1) -- do not touch such packages! and you expect us to support that ? o_O how you ensure that will work at all?? got an idea ?
Support -- of course not. I am asking for providing such feature as sensitive upgrade (i.e. do not upgrade downgraded packages). Ensure -- user risk. Note. User intentionally _downgraded_ package P before (several times). It is easy to detect such case and leave such packages intact. Of course some kind of dialog could be provided: " Installer found out that you downgraded packages. Do you want them to upgrade now? [ ] P1 [ ] P2 [ ] P3 ... " Once again -- if user uses OS 10.2 and at the same time package P is installed from OS 10.1 it had to be a good reason for it, and probably in such case user knows better (than current installer).
Providing unmantained code to users is a very risky, irresponsible thing and should be avoided by all means.
Different goals obviously. I see no purpose in having maintained, nice, etc. software which make make hardware stop working. I rather see providing unmaintained software as risky, but if it is necessary, valid mean to make hardware work.
Backward compatibility really matters -- It matters as much as any other area, but frecuently conflicts with things as like ease of manteniance, security,correctness..etc..
You are right. So maybe let's focus on one piece -- what do you think about this "smart upgrade" idea (not upgrading downgraded packages)? have a nice day, bye -- Maciej Pilichowski --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org