Feature changed by: Federico Lucifredi <flucifredi@novell.com> Feature #305634, revision 5 - Title: Dist-upgrade + Title: Debian-like dist-upgrade live system full version upgrade - openSUSE-11.2: New + openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) Interested: Andre Duffeck (aduffeck) Interested: Guy Lunardi (glunardi) Interested: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) Interested: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Interested: Stephan Binner (beineri) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: - Dist upgrade to full fledged migration status. - Online migration should be supported from 11.1 to 11.2 + With the 11.2 cycle, we want to offer users the ability to perform a + live system upgrade in the manner of Debian's dist-upgrade. + For the purpose of this cycle, we want to support dist-upgrade from the + previous version (11.1) only, as this is a sufficiently complicated + problem as is. + From the user's view, the difference is between being able to update + the system incrementally within the given version or service pack + running, to being ble to migrate with a system command ("zypper dup" or + similar) to a higher version altogether. In the Debian experience, the + set of base distributions is not necessarily limited, but it has been + Ubuntu's practice to define what starting points other than "release n- + 1" are allowed (for instance, all LTS versions are purported to be able + to "apt dist-upgrade" to the top of the line, although I have heard of + problems trying to jump two years - 6.06->8.10 - in a fell swoop in + this manner :-). In the openSUSE scope, we should aim to be able to + "dup" between incremental versions, starting from 11.1 to 11.2, and + later 11.x to 12.0. + Business case (Partner benefit): + openSUSE.org: With the introduction of the Zypper stack to SLE, we + finally reached the state of a featureful (which YOU was not) and fast, + reliable (which ZLM was not) update stack in the platform. + For enterprise use, some tweaks are still desirable (changelogs, + rollback, ...) which we are looking at, as well as improvements on the + Enterprise management front, which we are working on with our SRM + colleagues. + The only really significant competitive feature we are missing at this + point is the Debian/Ubuntu dist-upgrade functionality, which has a + powerful psychological impact at the Enterprise level and a much more + tangible impact at the small user / single user level: many with no IT + department do use Ubuntu these days on the basis that "chasing" Fedora + and openSUSE along the six-month upgrade cycle is too much for them, + and feel they can save time on Ubuntu with the combination of dist- + upgrade and the longer LTS cycle. + The rationale for pursuing this is to revoke the special status of + coolness this functionality gives Ubuntu, and to terminate the negative + influence that has on our SLE sales (from the expert's personal + opinion, the preference then spills into purchasing). Discussion: #1: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2009-01-07 20:42:15) This is the #1 feature in the systems management scope for 11.2 - I have no doubt it will be fun :-) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305634