Post by @halcy@icosahedron.website

the fact that the english language has both the words "update" as well as "upgrade" has been a disaster for the usability of package manager command line interfaces

0 Boosts

0 Likes

halcy :icosahedron:

@halcy@icosahedron.website 10 hr. ago

Behold: Package Manager up(date|grade) quiz!

Good luck! I hope I got all of these right lmao

https://halcy.de/misc/quiz/

Quiz: up(date|grade)
Select the command line option that the given tool uses, 'both' if it uses both as either aliases or for different purposes, or 'neither' if it doesn't use either. Both a plain 'update' or 'upgrade' surrounded by spaces and an '--update' or '--upgrade' flag count, --update-xyz or --upgrade-xyz do not. Latest versions as of September 2026. — Quiz: up(date|grade) Select the command line option that the given tool uses, 'both' if it uses both as either aliases or for different purposes, or 'neither' if it doesn't use either. Both a plain 'update' or 'upgrade' surrounded by spaces and an '--update' or '--upgrade' flag count, --update-xyz or --upgrade-xyz do not. Latest versions as of September 2026.

Daniel Neuman

@remaster@mastodon.social 10 hr. ago

Pink

@can@haz.pink 10 hr. ago

@halcy also, I feel docker should be part of it as well

halcy :icosahedron:

@halcy@icosahedron.website 10 hr. ago

@can man what does docker even use. neither?

Pink

@can@haz.pink 9 hr. ago

@halcy yeah, pull

Pink

@can@haz.pink 10 hr. ago

@halcy 6/14, but where is my beloved composer?

halcy :icosahedron:

@halcy@icosahedron.website 10 hr. ago

@can I did actually have composer in the list early on but I already had quite a few "both"s so I got rid of it >>

Pink

@can@haz.pink 9 hr. ago

@halcy technically, composer has both and neither, because for updating composer itself, you gotta use self-upgrade. Or selfupdate. Or selfupgrade. Or self-update. I never get it right.

halcy :icosahedron:

@halcy@icosahedron.website 10 hr. ago

yes, yt-dlp is a package manager. it manages one package, that package being yt-dlp

elomatreb 🚂

@elomatreb@chaos.social 10 hr. ago

halcy :icosahedron:

@halcy@icosahedron.website 10 hr. ago

Christian Lawson-Perfect

@christianp@mathstodon.xyz 15 hr. ago

@halcy looking forward to the day I can upbraid npm

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website 16 hr. ago

@halcy Look it's SIMPLE.

"update" makes your packages newer, and "upgrade" makes them steeper.

DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-lab

@djsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology 9 hr. ago

@gaditb @halcy I guess it really is right there in the name. any objection I could raise is now tabled indefinitely.

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website 9 hr. ago

@djsundog @halcy Some other Useful Package Management Verbs are upbraid, upset, uplink, and upend.

Which make you packages more complex, more static, more dynamic, and.. longer, I think.

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website 9 hr. ago

@djsundog @halcy `upside` maybe makes them more opinionated?

Like `pkg upside coreutils` makes `ls` no longer do columns and `cat` drop `-v`.

`pkg upright`, of course, makes them more Corrent. Both the utility and the specific changes this would bring can be considered obvious.

Gadfly (-booq-)

@gaditb@icosahedron.website 15 hr. ago

@halcy (For example: `pkg upgrade nano` --> it's `vi` now,, I think,,)