Test3->Final Release

[scotta3234]

I currently have Test3 installed on my laptop and I just want to get a few things cleared up so i don't have to go doing a clean install once the final release is out. My questions are:

1. How careful do I have to be when installing packages in Test3 if I plan on doing an upgrade to the final release?

2. I know I have to change the repositories over once the final release is out, can somebody explain this in a little more detail as I have always done a clean install.

I know it should be pretty easy so I'm not worried about it but a little clarification on the repos stuff would be appreciated.

[Seve]

Hello scotta:

This is just some advice / suggestions / checks that I would follow if I was planning an on-the-fly from the beta to the official
And in no way should be considered a how-to . Unless it works
[If there was an official how-to that I was aware of I would post the link]

You should be careful as to what you actually install between now and the date of the final release of F8. If it was me, I'd probably hold off on installing anything at this point.

See the Release Schedule Release Schedule
You need to be aware of any 3rd party repos that you currently have installed as well. In theory, if the basic structure of their repo has not changed, then once you install the correct fedora-release package it should take care of the 3rd party repo configuration as well. [As the variables should get the release / arch etc. correct]

At the point of release there will be available a couple of key rpm packages for making the transition [correctly updating the repos / release etc.]. This of course will not be automatic. You will need to manually grab and install these.

fedora-release-8-X
and
fedora-release-notes-8-X

You probably have something like fedora-release-7.9X currently installed.

To see what files are provided by fedora-release

rpm -q --filesbypkg fedora-release

Hopefully others can chime in and provide some tips / advice as well.


Rahul is likely to be the most knowledgeable in this area and able to provide much better guidance.

Seve

[scotta3234]

So there should be rpm packages to change over the repos... This seems like pretty good news to me as I though I would have to manually sort through much of that. Still wish I could install all the packages I want now without having to wonder if it would cause me trouble down the road in a week... oh well. Thanks!

[bob]

I'm planning on installing on an extended partition and holding onto my Fedora7 until I've got it working perfectly. Actually, this will be the first attempt at adding a distro on an extended partition, so that might be fun in itself! Once it's all behaving nicely, I'll move over those /home items that I want to keep and double-check that my setup is a 'match' and then simply delete the Fedora7 install.

[RahulSundaram]

Originally Posted by scotta3234

I currently have Test3 installed on my laptop and I just want to get a few things cleared up so i don't have to go doing a clean install once the final release is out. My questions are:

1. How careful do I have to be when installing packages in Test3 if I plan on doing an upgrade to the final release?

2. I know I have to change the repositories over once the final release is out, can somebody explain this in a little more detail as I have always done a clean install.

I know it should be pretty easy so I'm not worried about it but a little clarification on the repos stuff would be appreciated.

For this release, we have provided a fedora-release package as an update recently in the development branch post test 3 release which disables the development repository and points to the Fedora 8 mirror list for base and updates. It now redirects (server side) to the development repository but when we branch off into Fedora 9, the repository that you have now will still be pinned to the Fedora 8 release. So it is generally safe to just yum update.

If you are working on the test/development release, it is generally a very good to keep track of the discussions in fedora-test and fedora-devel mailing lists so that you can aware of any issues as and when they happen.