[Live-demo] Dist-upgrade

[Alex Mandel]

Hamish wrote:
> Alex wrote:
>> More in general in setup.sh shouldn't we use apt-get
>> dist-upgrade instead of just upgrade to play it safe?
> 
> 
> don't you mean "apt-get safe-upgrade"  ??
> 
> 
> dist-upgrade is used to update from 9.10 to 10.04 once it is released. and this generally requires a bit of handholding and
> care so should not be done automatically.
> 
> if you need dist-upgrade it indicates that something is broken
> or not fully upgraded from e.g. 8.10 if your setup.
> 
> if ubuntu is releasing in-distrib security updates which require
> dist-upgrade to work, well fooey on them.
> 
> 
> ?,
> Hamish

To clarify the naming of commands is kind of misleading:
dist-upgrade is not the command on Ubuntu to change from 9.04 to 9.10
(example). It's actually what you would think would be called
smart-upgrade or safe-upgrade. It actually matches the synaptic smart
update option.

"dist-upgrade
           dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of
upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new
versions of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system,
and it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the
expense of less important ones if necessary. The
/etc/apt/sources.list file contains a list of locations from which to
retrieve desired package files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a
mechanism for overriding the general settings for individual
packages."

safe-upgrade is an aptitude command not an apt command, go figure...

Alex