Question

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What is "dist-upgrade" and why does it upgrade more than "upgrade"?

rated 0 times [ 426] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 798038 / 2 Years ago, tue, september 27, 2022, 12:31:06

I was wondering why upgrade sometimes doesn't want to upgrade certain parts of the system, while dist-upgrade does. Here's an example after running apt-get upgrade:

apt-get upgrade:

rimmer@rimmer-Lenovo-IdeaPad-S10-2:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

The following packages have been kept back:

  linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.

versus apt-get dist-upgrade:

rimmer@rimmer-Lenovo-IdeaPad-S10-2:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

Calculating upgrade... Done

The following NEW packages will be installed:

  linux-headers-3.0.0-13 linux-headers-3.0.0-13-generic

  linux-image-3.0.0-13-generic

The following packages will be upgraded:

  linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic

3 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Need to get 48.5 MB of archives.

After this operation, 215 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

In other words, why can't this be performed by upgrade?

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izeeas

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4 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago earxcept · Accepted Answer

From apt-get manual:

upgrade

   upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages

   currently installed on the system from the sources enumerated in

   /etc/apt/sources.list. Packages currently installed with new

   versions available are retrieved and upgraded; under no

   circumstances are currently installed packages removed, or packages

   not already installed retrieved and installed. New versions of

   currently installed packages that cannot be upgraded without

   changing the install status of another package will be left at

   their current version. An update must be performed first so that

   apt-get knows that new versions of packages are available.



dist-upgrade

   dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade,

   also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions

   of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and

   it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the

   expense of less important ones if necessary. So, dist-upgrade

   command may remove some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list file

   contains a list of locations from which to retrieve desired package

   files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a mechanism for overriding

   the general settings for individual packages.

And with the newer apt tool available from 14.04 onwards:

full-upgrade

   full-upgrade performs the function of upgrade but may also remove

   installed packages if that is required in order to resolve a

   package conflict.

In your particular case, I see, for example, that linux-headers is a virtual package that is provided by both linux-headers-3.0.0-12 and linux-headers-3.0.0-13 and that sounds like the kind of package installation and removal handled by dist-upgrade, but not by upgrade.