Re: Why GUI software update tool is broken for me

Przemek Klosowski <przemek.klosowski@xxxxxxxx> · Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:52:52 -0400



    On 06/15/2016 09:27 AM, Phil Cameron
      wrote:

    
    On 06/15/2016
      05:16 AM, Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
      

        Id be interested in the original
          rationale behind this change, as I say, I
          

        I believe the rationale is that there was no sane way to update
        running
        

        applications (firefox, at least, would start not working in
        interesting
        

        ways when you update it after having launched it).
    
    
      So when you
        update an application that is running all you do is unlink the
        file name from the old file and link it to the new file. The old
        file does not go away because it is open by the running program.
        When the program exits, the file is deleted (only if the
        reference count is 0). The next time the program is run it will
        use the new file.
      
    
    There's also the issue of all the process-to-process
      communications: desktop bus, systemd and inter-app API, etc. The
      updated processes may speak a different language, and currently
      there's no unified way to express those
      relationships/dependencies. Some of the data may be even
      in-flight, so static version checking is not enough: consider the
      scenario of appA 1.0 checking and sending a desktop bus message to
      appB 1.0; then appB gets updated to 2.0, and doesn't understand
      the message it receives.
    I totally agree with you that requiring offline updates with
      reboot is heavy-handed, but it's the only reliable way given the
      current state of technology. You and I live dangerously by
      delaying those reboots, but there's a downside to that.

    
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