Arch Linux

vincde

Member

Registered: 2007-05-22

Posts: 18

pacman upgrade, safe or unsafe, how to choose ?

I'm coming from the gentoo and BSD world (yet I still keep BSD for my servers).

My questions is related to the pacman upgrade process. I would like to know if it will be possible to have a safe upgrade mechanism ?

When we are making such upgrade, this is always a balance choice between the stability and the last patches/upgrade. With Arch, if I'm correct, users cannot choose.

If it's not implemented within the Pacman processes, it will be interesting to let users possibilities to choose if they prefer stability versus latest versions of packages.

This would be implemented within the repository, by flagging packages: "very safe", "safe", "latest", "testing" (just for example).
That way people would be able to sync their machine with the repository corresponding to their choice.

Would it be possible within Archlinux ?
Have you already look at that kind of feature ?
If yes, What's the "road map" ?

Thanks.

PS:
Sorry, if this was already discussed.
I've not found it.

loserveg

Member

From: Pittsburgh, Pa

Registered: 2006-12-22

Posts: 45

Re: pacman upgrade, safe or unsafe, how to choose ?

im not totally sure on this, but from what i understand, current and extra are supposed to be "the latest stable" where testing and unstable would be "the latest and greatest".

so i guess good practice would be to only enable testing and unstable if you are looking for "latest" and "testing" otherwise upgrades from current and extra should be safe-very safe 99% of the time.

vincde

Member

Registered: 2007-05-22

Posts: 18

Re: pacman upgrade, safe or unsafe, how to choose ?

Thanks loserveg.

But, for example, why an upgrade is available in "current" ?

Because of security issues ? simple upgrade ? major upgrade ?

Imagine I don't want to take risks with any upgrade.
How can I proceed to only apply "security" updates ?

Thanks

Cerebral

Forum Fellow

From: Waterloo, ON, CA

Registered: 2005-04-08

Posts: 3,108

Website

Re: pacman upgrade, safe or unsafe, how to choose ?

Currently there is no way with Arch to only get 'security' updates - the rolling release system we use means all our packages try to follow the upstream maintainer's newest versions.  Stuff that could potentially cause big breakage go to the testing repo first to ensure all possible necessary rebuilds and whatnot get done.

Ramses de Norre

Member

From: Leuven - Belgium

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 1,289

Re: pacman upgrade, safe or unsafe, how to choose ?

I think you have kind of chosen the bad distro if you want a package system like you describe... One of arch's important features (to me at least) is it's rolling release system which is quite the contrary of what you're after...
So I guess you'll need to either live with it or search for another distro that fits your needs better.

shining

Pacman Developer

Registered: 2006-05-10

Posts: 2,043

Re: pacman upgrade, safe or unsafe, how to choose ?

debian stable..

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pacman roulette : pacman -S $(pacman -Slq | LANG=C sort -R | head -n $((RANDOM % 10)))