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#1 2011-02-03 06:29:14

Malvineous
Member
From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: 2011-02-03
Posts: 189
Website

How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

Hi all,

I'm a long time Gentoo user, but as I don't have the time to upgrade my system every five minutes I only end up running upgrades every few months (or when I want to install a program that has a long string of dependencies.)

Unfortunately this process always ends in tears for me, as Gentoo is not designed to go for more than a few weeks between upgrades.  So every time I do this packages fail to compile, programs won't run because of missing dependencies, libraries can't be upgraded because of weird conflicts, and I generally end up tearing my hair out trying to get my system back up and running again.

So I've pretty much had enough of this and I'm looking for a new distro.  Gentoo would be perfect if it could cope with lengthy delays between upgrades, and from what I have read Arch has a similar methodology so I'm thinking Arch might be the way to go.

So - how does Arch cope if you wait six months or more between upgrading software packages?  After upgrading a library, do you need to "manually" (at least Gentoo has a script) find applications that have broken and update those too?  Or does pacman leave you with a working system every time you run it?

Any other insights that would be useful for someone coming from the Gentoo world?

Thanks!

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#2 2011-02-03 06:55:12

Pierre
Developer
From: Bonn
Registered: 2004-07-05
Posts: 1,964
Website

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

If you only update twice a year or less Arch is probably the wrong choice. After all it's a rolling release distro and you definitely need more time maintaining the system.

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#3 2011-02-03 07:07:44

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

In theory, everything should run, but 6 months is a lot of time, you can have python2 -> python3 transition, a couple major rebuilds, some packages change their names or you get a dozen of smaller packages instead of one big http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 18235.html some packages get dropped (moved to AUR) and you need to manually follow up with all those things.
And sometimes some upgrade breaks your system. When you upgrade regularly (let's say once a week), you may report the bug and simply downgrade the offending packages to the previous versions until a fix is released. It you upgrade twice a year, most packages will get updated and finding out what went wrong (and reading all the relevant forum posts from the last 6 months) is a PITA.
IMHO Ubuntu & friends is a better choice for you.

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#4 2011-02-03 07:41:54

Watermel0n
Member
Registered: 2010-03-10
Posts: 60

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

I agree with the previous replies, you should update your system more often. I think it should also be noted that Arch updates take a lot less time than Gentoo updates, since nothing has to be compiled. If you update once a week you only need ~10min per week, during which you can still do other stuff on your PC, to keep you system up to date. You should consider this.

And you don't need to manually find broken applications if a library gets updated. The Arch Devs have in 99% of the cases also fixed that specific app.

Last edited by Watermel0n (2011-02-03 07:44:02)

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#5 2011-02-03 09:46:41

Malvineous
Member
From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: 2011-02-03
Posts: 189
Website

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

Thanks for the helpful replies!  Just to clarify, the problems I have with Gentoo are not so much the changes (e.g. updating configuration files to work with a new app version) my main complaint is that the upgrade just doesn't work.  If I could run one command and come back 24 hours later and it was complete then that would be fine, the problem I have is that it breaks every few packages so doing a full upgrade takes days - and I mean days where you are sitting in front of it manually adding, removing and reinstalling packages to keep the package management system happy.

So when you mention things like packages changing their names or a python2 -> python3 transition, do you mean that pacman can't automatically handle this, and some manual intervention would be required?  Because really, all I'm after is something like Gentoo but with less compile errors and nonsense complaints about package conflicts - something smart enough to just figure out what needs to be done by itself.  But if this is likely to happen under Arch as well, maybe you're right and something like Ubuntu would be more my style (wow, coming from Slackware originally, I never thought I'd say that!)

Of course if it's binary-based then presumably these errors surface much faster than they do with Gentoo, so I'm curious - what are the types of problems you mostly get from pacman when upgrading your whole system?

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#6 2011-02-03 09:51:26

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

If you always -Syu, even if you're using [testing] nothing should really break. The last time I remember any breakage was when libpng/libjpg updated and some mirrors only partially synced....

Pacman automatically handles dependencies, and if your mirror is in sync none of the software from the repos should break. At all. Anyone who says otherwise just believes the hype about Allan.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

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#7 2011-02-03 09:56:25

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

Sometimes some manual intervention might be needed. Let's take multilib as an example. All you really need to do is read the announcement and follow it:
If you want to use the new multilib packages (and most desktop or laptop users probably do), add the following lines to your pacman.conf:

[multilib]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

Unbundling of xorg-*-apps/utils packages is another example where you might get a little confused. Some apps might be "missing" because you have to install them individually now. They're all in the repos, so you only need a minute to bring your system back to order.

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#8 2011-02-03 10:52:34

Ramses de Norre
Member
From: Leuven - Belgium
Registered: 2007-03-27
Posts: 1,289

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

To me, it sounds like arch could be a good distro for you. It takes some time to do the initial set-up, but once you've covered that, there is really not much maintenance. I hardly ever have breakage after upgrading (I tend to upgrade daily, though) and the only user intervention that is frequently required is the merging of edited with new config files.

The examples karol supplied are pretty rare, and well covered in the news feed on the home page. So if you subscribe to the rss feed you should be warned in time.

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#9 2011-02-03 11:29:09

Malvineous
Member
From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: 2011-02-03
Posts: 189
Website

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

Interesting...yes I have no problems dealing with "real" changes like config file updates (although that's one of the reasons I don't update that often) what gets to me is when the automated upgrade system requires hand holding to get the job done.

Well it sounds like Arch is certainly worth a shot (can't be any *worse*, anyway) so I'll put it on next time I do a reinstall.

Thanks again for all the helpful info!

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#10 2011-02-03 14:20:28

Awebb
Member
Registered: 2010-05-06
Posts: 6,275

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

I don't update my laptop very often since I don't use it much at the moment.

I had the following moments when manual interaction was needed after about 6 months without updates:

- Xorg 1.7 -> 1.8: removed HAL and read about how things work now.
- python -> python2 & python3 -> python: Some of my AUR packages needed to be reinstalled/edited

Every thing else worked fine or isn't worth mentioning (like minor changes in configs).

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#11 2011-02-03 14:44:29

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

I have never had major breakage - but then again that depends on what applications you use. For eg. Recent xfce and kde upgrades have create a lot of headache for its users.

I use a minimal system with i3 wm and havent had upgrade breakage since 2~3 years. Small fixes are always required obviously, but they take a few minutes as opposed to a few days and I personally can deal with that.


Forum Rules

There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#12 2011-02-03 15:57:03

.:B:.
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2006-11-26
Posts: 5,819
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Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

The question is: how would you cope with upgrading Arch twice a year?

Arch is designed for fast, frequent updates, if you decide to do one twice a year, you end up fixing whatever breaks but could have been avoided, usually, by upgrading incrementally. Surely, if you want to run a hands-on, high profile Linux distro, you can spare some time more that two or three times a year, to fix whatever is broken? I mean, if you use Gentoo...


Got Leenucks? :: Arch: Power in simplicity :: Get Counted! Registered Linux User #392717 :: Blog thingy

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#13 2011-02-03 16:11:43

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

actually, as far as ive read in the dev-mailing-list, arch is supposed to upgrade correctly from the install media. so (in theory) you could not upgrade until a new iso is released (every 6monthes).

and even if i remember correctly, the idea was to support upto two cd releases.

but please, dont quote me on that. wink

another idea im thinking of:

setup a cronjob to download all updates every night, you will have the entire upgradepath till the time you decide to take the plunge. then update in the order they got downloaded wink

again: dont quote me on that.

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#14 2011-02-03 16:22:29

whompus
Member
From: Durham. UK
Registered: 2005-08-09
Posts: 256

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

I look after 2 computers that regularly go 3-4 months before updating without to many problems, as previously mentioned read the announcements for any major changes beforehand.

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#15 2011-02-03 22:12:41

DKnight
Member
Registered: 2010-12-23
Posts: 19

Re: How does Arch cope with occasional upgrades?

Well, I'm no expert but I've installed Arch on several computers, last one as recent as yesterday, and every time I did it from scratch with the "2010.05" CD; everything upgraded real smooth with a couple of "pacman -Syu". That's 8 months, so I think at least you can count on base and base-devel not breaking when you upgrade.

Last edited by DKnight (2011-02-03 22:14:53)

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