Streamline release upgrades, text mode upgrading

[Prateek Karandikar]

There seem to be many mysteries about the process of release upgrading, which the official documentation should clear up. Is do-release-upgrade ok for desktops? http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades are quiet on this matter. Why is do-release-upgrade a separate, singular command, instead of being integrated with apt-get, aptitude, etc? It doesn't have a man page, which adds to the mystery (bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager-core/+bug/149042 ). Where are users expected to find out documentation about it?

I do all my package management from the terminal, and would like to do the same for release upgrade. It can be done in a screen session, it can be easily done over ssh, it is not affected by X freezes/restarts, etc. Besides, it feels weird that a GUI is _required_ for upgrading a desktop system. Is it? The documentation is quiet on this matter too.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UpdateManagerFaq mentions some interesting stuff. Some of that should be explained properly in the official documentation, including the mysterious references to a "release upgrader".

Suggestions:
1) The documentation should explain various aspects of the release upgrade process, including how desktops and servers are different (or how they are not).
2) Release upgrading should be integrated into the existing apt tools, with graphical and text interfaces. "aptitude release-upgrade", perhaps?

[Loye Young (loyeyoung)]

This is the same problem as we had upgrading from feisty to gutsy. Simply replacing gutsy with hardy in /etc/apt/sources.list and upgrading with aptitude is much easier, faster, and less error-prone than the "recommended" upgrades using the graphical interfaces or than using the "do-release-upgrade" script. I'd be happy to help with improving the upgrade experience, but it's hard to assist when there's no documentation.

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

I think this should have been posted on a forum first as it needs more discussion.

[MarcRandolph (mrand)]

I disagree that this should been posted to the forums. Some documentation on the command should have been posted before it gets pushed out as a half-approved method of upgrading.

To add to the confusion, the "mode" mentioned UpdateManagerFaq and on the Bug #222048 seem to say it is required to have a "-m desktop". But under what situations is that the case? Obviously not all cases, because
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades#Network%20Upgrade%20from%207.10%20for%20Kubuntu%20Desktops%20%28Recommended%29 doesn't include it. Or is that a typo?

[Prateek Karandikar (prateek.karandikar)]

Bump! Upgrade time coming up again.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Since this does not seem to describe a bug in any software package in the Ubuntu distribution, I am closing that task. I am not sure why Matthew invalidated the website task with no comment. The lack of man page for do-release-upgrade seems to have been fixed, and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Upgrades mentions it under the heading "Server / Command Line", so it seems to be documented to me.