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On Sun, 14 May 2017 11:49:14 -0400
Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:

> This concern that you characterize as a "myth" is something I read in
> various apt package distro mailing lists on a somewhat regular basis.
> I also have one buddy from my LUG whose machine was borked immediately
> after doing a apt get dist upgrade.


Hallo Steve,

I suppose you are talking about trans-release dist-upgrades and not the
scarce but sometimes important upgrades that introduce new dependencies
within the lifetime of the installed release.

I run apt-get dist-upgrade on a regular basis (i.e. usually when my
upgrade script reports "not upgraded" packages) and can't remember to
have run into any problems.

To not accidentally upgrade to a new release, I "pin" my systems by
using the release's codename (e.g. "jessie") in the sources.list
instead of "stable" or "testing".

Regarding the "cleanup" before upgrading to a new release (mentioned
in this thread), I use to do two things immediately after the initial
minimal install, which keep my systems slim and sleek and, by the way,
deprecate this additional step when I upgrade to a new release:

1) edit apt.conf to the following

florian@nulldevice:~$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/02norecommend
APT::Install-Recommends "0";
APT::Install-Suggests "0";
APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant "1";
APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant "1";

2) install and run debfoster

Then I repeat running debfoster carefully after every installation of a
meta-package, starting with the removal of the meta-package itself.

libre Grüße,

Florian


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