-proposed and NotAutomatic ButAutomaticUpgrades

[Stéphane Graber]

On 06/15/2012 11:53 AM, Iain Lane wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I argued for this at UDS, but we didn't come to a conclusion. I'd like
> to raise this topic again so that we can see whether it is wanted it or
> not.
> 
> I'd like to enable NotAutomatic ButAutomaticUpgrades (as for -backports)
> for the -proposed pocket pre-release (FROZEN or DEVELOPMENT). The effect
> that this would have would be that users with devel_release-proposed
> enabled would not be automatically offered upgrades to packages in
> -proposed. They would still be able to explicitly opt-in on a
> per-package basis (apt-get install foo/quantal-proposed, for example),
> or to opt-in for everything by fiddling with package pins.

I was +1 on this at UDS and still am. I think it's much better for us to
set NotAutomatic ButAutomaticUpgrades on the archive side, than trying
to do some clever magic in the dist upgrader.
Especially as early upgrades typically can't/don't use the dist-upgrader.

> We've already reiterated many times that -proposed pre-release is not
> supposed to be something that users (even developers) are supposed to be
> using. It's a staging area for packages, mainly to avoid skew and to
> keep the development release (the release pocket) working and
> installable as far as possible. Thus it seems to me that there is little
> point in imposing the additional irritation of dealing with archive
> problems on users of the development release when we don't think they
> should be using it anyway.
> 
> You could say that people have opted in to the -proposed experience by
> enabling it in their sources list, but what we'd be giving them in the
> development release is very different to what -proposed is used for in
> stable releases, so I don't think it necessarily makes sense to say that
> opting in to stable -proposed implies that you'd want the other.
> 
> Another option would be to have the release upgrader disable -proposed
> when upgrading to a development release, but that isn't very
> satisfactory since people with it enabled probably would want it back
> when the release goes stable, and they'd not even have the option of
> cherry-picking packages without having to go and manually enable it
> again.
> 
> It was really quite simple to extend Launchpad for this. I've got a
> branch (not pushed anywhere) that does this, and will submit it to
> Launchpad upstream if there is consensus that this would be desirable.
> (In fact it's protected by a feature flag so it wouldn't be harmful to
> push this now, but would be rather pointless if Ubuntu doesn't want it)
> 
> Cheers, 


-- 
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com

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