Transactional system upgrades without compromise

hugo@whynothugo.nl (Hugo Osvaldo Barrera) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 11:18:56 +0200

This article is about two desirable traits in system upgrades: atomicity and being able to roll back.

Atomicity: the upgrade is either applied in full or not applied at all. The system is not left in a broken state because, e.g., “the package manager updated half of the files and then died”. This includes situations like a power failure mid-upgrade.
Rollback-capable: if a system upgrade fails, or doesn’t work, it’s still possible to use the device in a previous system state.

These two traits dramatically increase the reliability of a device that’s updated in the field, where the risk of an unusable device after an upgrade should be as minimal as possible.

Literacy on WhyNotHugo (雨果)

Transactional system upgrades without compromise