Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10

Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by stephengillie on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @02:09PM (#9460396)

One of the core issues with breaking this pattern is that you're installing a new feature on this reboot, then installing all of its patches on the next reboot.

  So you install 186 updates on a fresh install. This includes .NET 4.5 (or 4.5.1 or 4.5.2), and requires a reboot.

  Now you're done right? You just installed 168 updates, how many updates can there be? On your next reboot, you get another 60 updates, of which 20 are .NET 4.5 updates and security updates. Another is the OS SP1, which needed a reboot before install.

  Now you're done right? You just installed 228 updates, how many updates can there be? On your next reboot, you have another 168 updates, most of which are patches for OS SP1. 

  Now you're done right? You just installed 396 updates, how many updates can there be? On your next reboot, you have another 12 updates, including...

I've seen this chain across more than 6 reboots. I once literally spent an entire day just patching a server.

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by acdha on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @05:19PM (#9461875)

This is also compounded by how long those updates take because they somehow managed to make writing files to disk a CPU-bound process at some point in the mid-2000s. If you have 50MB of updates to install on any other operating system it will take a few seconds but on Windows XP+ it will run at a few hundred KB/s while using 100% of a CPU which can run SHA-512 at well over 1Gbps.

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by tomswartz07 on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @02:25PM (#9460554)

Yep, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

I don't see why they cant 'look ahead' to say; Oh- this update X depends on update Y, but it's going to be installed, so we could just add it in the queue anyway.

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by bentcorner on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @02:58PM (#9460811)

Or rather, slipstream future updates to current downloads. E.g., if you're installing component X that has patches A, B, C, then perhaps you should get customers to download component X that is already in a patched state.

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by whoopdedo on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @03:21PM (#9461005)

What I always wonder, while twiddling my thumbs during the interminable upgrade-reboot-upgrade cycle, is how many of these these updates will be overwritten by a later update. Am I wasting my time downloading multiple versions of the same file?

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by UweSchmidt on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @04:07PM (#9461341)

These upgrade-shortcuts could introduce a significant increase in testing complexity if you want ensure that you can go from any system version to the current version.

On the other hand, with the current system people upgrade from Windows 1.0 to 8 (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WP7AkJo3OE).

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by Guvante on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @04:36PM (#9461557)

Unfortunately the update reboot cycle is incredibly reliable, which is why it has persisted. Can't beat "millions of machines have taken these steps".

Thoroughly agree that a more simplified method would be awesome though.

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by stephengillie on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @03:56PM (#9461259)

That's the kind of functionality I expect from Windows Deployment Services.

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by neckro23 on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @07:56PM (#9462618)

You can skip maybe half of this by installing the Service Pack manually right away. It still sucks, but not quite as much.

No idea why Windows insists on installing individual updates before the Service Pack that includes them all anyways...

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by kristopolous on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @02:54PM (#9460784)

that was decent work. Good job - really accurate.

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by stephengillie on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @03:38PM (#9461128)

I'm going thru the process as we speak. :)

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Re:Introducing PackageManagement in Windows 10 by tacticus on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @09:31PM (#9462836)

I use the powershell script from the packer winrm project.

it's ugly as sin and requires many many reboots (and is slow as fuck) but at least it gets them all installed.

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