Package Upgrades in FOSS Distributions: Details and Challenges

The upgrade problems faced by Free and Open Source Software distributions have characteristics not easily found elsewhere. The authors describe the structure of packages and their role in the upgrade process. They show that state of the art package managers have shortcomings inhibiting their ability to cope with frequent upgrade failures. They survey current countermeasures to such failures, argue that they are not satisfactory, and sketch alternative solutions. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has attracted the attention of software engineers in the past decade due to its peculiarities.