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Bug#1041072: trixie: Explicitly flag that /usr-merge changes will break skip-upgrades

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Matthew Vernon

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Jul 14, 2023, 1:00:03 PM7/14/23
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Package: release-notes
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: debia...@debian.org

Hi,

We don't support skip-upgrades, but in practice they can often be made
to work by an experienced administrator.

For trixie, though, packages are going to be allowed to assume
merged-/usr, and the ongoing work to resolve the outstanding problems
around merged-/usr and dpkg is going to concentrate on making sure all
bookworm-trixie upgrades will work. But changes that could result in
file loss on a bullseye-trixie skip-upgrade will not be considered
bugs, so it would be good to particularly emphasise in the trixie
release notes that skip-upgrades to it are not supported, and that in
all circumstances administrators must upgrade to bookworm first.

Thanks,

Matthew

ps: on a procedular note, whilst I'm filing this bug as an action from
a technical committee meeting, this is not a formal TC request.

Justin B Rye

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Jul 15, 2023, 7:40:04 AM7/15/23
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Matthew Vernon wrote:
> We don't support skip-upgrades, but in practice they can often be made
> to work by an experienced administrator.
>
> For trixie, though, packages are going to be allowed to assume
> merged-/usr, and the ongoing work to resolve the outstanding problems
> around merged-/usr and dpkg is going to concentrate on making sure all
> bookworm-trixie upgrades will work. But changes that could result in
> file loss on a bullseye-trixie skip-upgrade will not be considered
> bugs, so it would be good to particularly emphasise in the trixie
> release notes that skip-upgrades to it are not supported, and that in
> all circumstances administrators must upgrade to bookworm first.

This issue shouldn't be a major risk as long as admins know to
install usrmerge as step one. (If they're upgrading direct from
stretch then I suppose step zero is "find a copy of usrmerge".)

Maybe a new warning-note thing at the top of section 4.2? Of course
if they're doing skip-upgrades because they don't have time to read
all those separate Release Notes then they're probably doomed...
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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