In one company there were quite old linux boxes that were never updated. They never caused any problems, the software in them kept chugging along just nicely.
Never update anything
11–20 of 288 posts
Re: Never update anything
#12As a red teamer/pentester, this is an attacker's dream. This has to be a joke.
Re: Never update anything
#13AWS: “Postgres 9.6 is old. On January 22 we will forcibly update your instances to 12. We hope you noticed this alert. We certainly didn’t email you about this. You’d better get off your ass and test/fix your clients for any potential issues.”
Re: Never update anything
#14Semantic versioning is a curse. It makes perfect logical sense until you are a few iterations in and quickly run into dependency hell as shown in the diagrams in the article. My solution to this isn't "never update anything", but rather "never version anything". People can choose to stick to the bits they originally got, which is perfectly fine, or they can switch to the current "live" one. As a developer I'm only ev…
100% the way to go. Also people in python land (myself included) Are prone to “emotional” versioning
Re: Never update anything
#15Semantic versioning is a curse. It makes perfect logical sense until you are a few iterations in and quickly run into dependency hell as shown in the diagrams in the article. My solution to this isn't "never update anything", but rather "never version anything". People can choose to stick to the bits they originally got, which is perfectly fine, or they can switch to the current "live" one. As a developer I'm only ev…
Versioning things helps with bug reports. Oh, this was introduced in 3.144.42? Great, let's look at the changes to that build.
You don't need semantic versioning for that. "Oh, this was introduced in build 22456" works just as well.
Re: Never update anything
#16I tend to agree with the premise that in general updates aren't something to race out and apply. Security updates, yes. Updates that are required because of API changes, yes. Other ones are often more trouble then they are worth.
Like the author mentions in the backporting section, if you don't update you'll fall behind maintained version and then you don't get security updates and upgrading is a huge chunk of work that has to be tackled as a giant step. Depends on your priorities and timeline, not updating is the most straightforward example of creating technical debt.
Re: Never update anything
#17> Docker Desktop doesn't let you decide whether you want updates or not, unless you pay them
This made me uninstall Docker Desktop.
Re: Never update anything
#18If the software you are using auto-updates and you lose business or esteem of peers -- it's YOUR fault. Allowing most software companies to update anything on an running functioning work-related machine that you use to make $$, is ASKING FOR IT. WHEN it breaks something that is your fault for being so stupid. I update software in most cases by installing it on another machine/device and then once it is confirmed to w…
Having two of everything is actually a pretty decent idea.
Part of the fear of updating though is the time sink.
Even if I attempt to update one mac laptop to the new version (of which I believe there is a new one just released, doesn’t seem long since I last updated…) knowing that I have a safe backup, I dread the thought of spending hours knowing something _should_ be working but is now broken. It can be infuriating. Especially when it’s a pattern/way of working you have become so accustomed to.
Re: Never update anything
#19If the software you are using auto-updates and you lose business or esteem of peers -- it's YOUR fault. Allowing most software companies to update anything on an running functioning work-related machine that you use to make $$, is ASKING FOR IT. WHEN it breaks something that is your fault for being so stupid. I update software in most cases by installing it on another machine/device and then once it is confirmed to w…
This resonates with me for a LOT of reasons but I take a very different approach. I try to keep just a few dependencies and keep them all up to date. For most updates I can read every line of updated code. I learn a lot, get all of the security patches, and sometimes I realize I don’t need a dependency and I remove it. I’m always trying to take small calculated risks. I have great monitoring and rollbacks are easy.
Re: Never update anything
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Versioning things helps with bug reports. Oh, this was introduced in 3.144.42? Great, let's look at the changes to that build.
You don't need semantic versioning for that. "Oh, this was introduced in build 22456" works just as well.
Except that using a build number in the way you're describing is just a worse semantic version. You now have no way to indicate if your changes are breaking. Separation of your pipelines also just got a lot more hectic because you could have a situation where you don't know what happened when you're missing "versions" (builds) because it's failing but still incrementing... Using build numbers for versioning doesn't really work in a large ecosystem and often relies on picking the latest of a branch or having to sift through builds when deploying to find the right one.