[Opendnssec-develop] Supporting downgrades

[Sara Dickinson]

On 13 Jul 2012, at 12:40, Jerry Lundström wrote:
> 
> -1
> 
> We must realize there is a lot of work supporting downgrades and in most cases it can't be done since there is often new features with new major releases that don't exist in old releases.
> 
> With my 10+ years sysadmin hat on: it is not common practice to support major version downgrades or even do them, if there is a problem with a software even after testing you do a rollback to a backup of the old version.
> 
> Having said that, if there is consensus amount developers that this should be done then I feel it should be brought up on the next OpenDNSSEC Architectural Board meeting and decided on what level this should effect the project. It would most likely prolong releases and may impact on feature selection, can we implement features that can't be downgraded etc.

Given the above, I suppose the main reason to support it would be if there were clear use cases where a rollback to a backup of the old version cannot be done for some reason. I am not aware of any for supported upgrade paths.  

> 
> Regarding this very special case with 1.4.0a1 in EPEL; it is decided by OAB that distribution packaging should not be done within the project, that responsibility is on the maintainers shoulders. Maybe its time to revise that in order to gain more control over the packages and increase the quality of releases.
> 
> /Jerry

Personally, I am hopeful that providing clearer statements recommending how alphas and betas should be used will address this issue in future. 

Sara.