what do you want to see in future apt versions ?

[Tom H]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 3:32 PM Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 03:20:37PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:


>> Your sources.list file specifies what distro you are using, and if
>> you do not change the version in there, you will not and CANNOT get
>> a newer major version of the distribution, on *buntu, Debian, Mint,
>> whatever.
>>
> However simply running the script /usr/bin/do-release-upgrade does
> take you to a newer major version. How is the naive[ish] user
> supposed to tell the difference between:-
>
> apt dist-upgrade
>
> and:-
>
> do-release-upgrade

They don't do the same thing.

do-release-upgrade: upgrade all packages to the next (LTS) release,
installing and uninstalling packages if necessary.

apt full-upgrade|dist-upgrade: upgrade all packages, installing new
packages and uninstalling packages if necessary, for the current or
next release, depending on whether you've changed "sources.list" or
"release.sources".

Also:

apt upgrade: upgrade all packages, installing new packages if
necessary but without uninstalling packages, for the current release
(although, you can use it in a release upgrade, as an intermediate
step).

apt-get upgrade: upgrade all packages, without installing new packages
or uninstalling packages, for the current release (although, you can
use it in a release upgrade, as an intermediate step).

I'd be surprised if the result of "apt full-upgrade|dist-upgrade",
"apt upgrade", or "apt-get upgrade" would differ for a stable release
of Ubuntu or Debian.


> I think dist-upgrade should be renamed (or an alias should be added)
> to something like 'dep-upgrade' as that's what it does, it sorts out
> dependencies.

"dist-upgrade" cannot be renamed. I suppose that it could be turned
into an alias of a new verb.

"apt upgrade" resolves dependencies so "dep-upgrade" will be just as
confusing as "dist-upgrade" and "full-upgrade".