Keep old updates in -updates while new one is being phased

Bug #1929082 reported by Julian Andres Klode
32
This bug affects 4 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Triaged
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

Currently, when I have an ubuntu1 in release pocket, an ubuntu1.1 in updates, and then a new ubuntu1.2 migrates to updates; ubuntu1.1 is removed from updates, while ubuntu1.2 is phased.

This means APT has two choices when installing stuff, or upgrading: Install the ubuntu1.2 version that's not phased for us (assuming that), or install the ubuntu1 version from the release pockets.

After the fix for bug 1925745, APT will always respect phasing (currently it only does for upgrades, not new installs); but that means it will install the ubuntu1 version from the release pocket, which might be super buggy.

It would be very useful if the dominator could be changed such that old updates remain in place while the new one is phasing, such that apt can always install the "latest" version that's for our system.

Colin Watson (cjwatson)
tags: added: lp-soyuz soyuz-publish
Changed in launchpad:
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Low
importance: Low → High
Revision history for this message
Julian Andres Klode (juliank) wrote :

Bug 1954534 is an example of what happens when you already had a version from -updates installed, but then updates received a new version that's phasing, and you want to install a new binary from the source package: The installation fails, as the release pocket is unfortunately the candidate.

Revision history for this message
Seth Arnold (seth-arnold) wrote :

I'd like to suggest that we retain an older version regardless of phasing. I've helped several people roll back regressions by downloading binary packages off launchpad by hand, and that's not great fun:

- there's no gpg chain of trust
- constructing urls to wget for N packages takes effort

Expiring packages two weeks after they are superseded would solve more issues than just phasing updates getting out of sync for whatever reason.

Thanks

Revision history for this message
Julian Andres Klode (juliank) wrote :

That's probably also easier to implement I'd guess, seems like a good idea to me.

Revision history for this message
Julian Andres Klode (juliank) wrote :

Oh Seth if we phase longer than two weeks, we still also want to keep the old version around

Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

That's actually a much more complicated change when you work through all the ramifications (especially if it were to involve keeping the older version in the main Packages file rather than an older by-hash version - that would require delaying the status change to `SUPERSEDED`, and it's not at all obvious to me how that could be arranged given the design of the dominator and the publisher). I'd prefer not to derail this bug onto that.

The dominator change needed for the original request in this bug still involves some hard thinking, but I at least understand roughly how it would work: I think we'd have to consider publications with a non-None `phased_update_percentage` as being ineligible to dominate anything but another publication with the same version.

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