A couple of rants about Launchpad

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 10:32:45PM +0100, Mario Vukelic wrote:
> Having read Colin's other posts, I seem to be wrong in this regard.
> Seems to me things have changed, because when Update Manager was new I
> am pretty sure I have read in some Ubuntu docs or dev mailing list that
> upgrades through "apt-get dist-upgrade" are not tested and therefore may
> or may not work. Or maybe I was drunk.

Honestly, the only meaning that I can consistently assign to "not
supported" is "we'll reject bugs you file about it"; and that isn't the
case for 'apt-get dist-upgrade' in general.

It is true that such upgrades are less well-tested - that's simply a
statement of fact. Nevertheless, they'll generally work and only require
relatively minor manual intervention (especially in the hands of
knowledgeable users), and we ought not to mislead people into thinking
that the tools they like flat-out won't work and that they enter some
unsupported twilight zone when they use them, when that isn't true.

"Supported" is a more nebulous adjective than I would like!

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]