Upgrading via the desktop installer (ubiquity)

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 11:08:13AM +0100, Evan Dandrea wrote:
> In 11.04 and later versions, the desktop CD installer (ubiquity)
> presents an option to upgrade Ubuntu if it finds a single copy on the
> system.  This functionality is not exactly equal in operation to
> upgrade-manager, nor does it share much code with that application.
> 
> Such an upgrade will first make a backup of apt's state, including
> repacked debs (using dpkg-repack) for any packages that it cannot find
> a source for.  Following this, it will delete all non-user and
> non-local files on the existing partitions.  This is roughly
> everything but /usr/local, /var/local, /usr/src, and /home. It will
> then install Ubuntu over top of the partially-cleared directory
> structure and install the packages referenced in the apt state backup.
> 
> When triaging upgrade bugs, please make sure they're targeted to and
> have logs for the correct package.  If the user upgrades via the
> option in the desktop CD installer, change the package to ubiquity and
> have the user run `sudo apport-collect $bug_number`.

Does this type of upgrade leave behind some trace to allow us to determine
which upgrade method the user chose?

/usr/share/apport/general-hooks/ubuntu.py currently assumes that all
upgrades write /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log, and tags bug reports
with upgrade details accordingly.  If Ubiquity doesn't touch this file when
upgrading, it will be marking bug reports incorrectly in this case.

-- 
 - mdz