[indiana-discuss] Re: 3.1) Installation

[Glynn Foster]

Glynn Foster wrote:
>         INS-2: Existing installations should allow a seamless
>                upgrade to the next consecutive stable
>                release or future releases within certain well
>                defined boundaries.

This requirement has a lot to do with user expectations and a possible release
roadmap for this distribution. Before I finalized this document for sending, I
had the following detail -

"It should not be expected to support an upgrade skipping releases
eg. A -> B -> C is supported, A -> C is not supported without an
upgrade to B first."

and in the end I was convinced that should be removed, especially since I
believe Solaris supports upgrades from at least 2 releases behind. But the fact
remains, what is the user expectation vs the potential for supporting that
expectation?

For example, say you have a 6 monthly time based release cycle (that mail
discussion comes later)

  IND-1 ----> IND-2 ----> IND-3 ----> IND-4 ----> IND-5

Is there an expectation on the person running IND-1 to expect to upgrade to say
IND-4, without going through IND-2 *and* IND-3, or a new install (and I count
live upgrade in this space)? I personally don't think so (though an obvious nice
to have), purely from the standpoint of having too many upgrade paths to figure
out. This ties pretty strongly with package management, so it's likely we're not
in any shape to figure this out just yet - though an interesting conversation to
have.


Glynn