Fast upgrades [LWN.net]

Fast upgrades

Posted Apr 27, 2026 11:12 UTC (Mon) by taladar (subscriber, #68407)
In reply to: Fast upgrades by farnz
Parent article: Dependency-cooldown discussions warm up

Counter-point with the apps though, a lot of those rarely used apps are on there precisely because they need to be available and usable in situations where doing the update then and there is not feasible.

I don't travel by train that much but when I do I would be very upset to find at the train station that I need to go through a major update before I can check on which platform my train departs in 3 minutes, I don't need offline maps that often but when I do I really need the app to be usable without a connection,...

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Fast upgrades

Posted Apr 27, 2026 12:38 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Sure - but the need is to update before leaving home when you're going to travel by train, not to update every day to get the latest bug fixes and improvements.

Worse, the "go through an update before I can check on which platform my train departs in 3 minutes" problem is just as much caused by "update immediately" as by "delay updates until I need the app" - if you update and leave home, a new update is made available while you're en-route, and then when you get to the train station, you can't access the app because you need to spend the next 15 minutes downloading an update via a congested network, you're going to be unhappy.