[atlas] Encouraging people to upgrade software probe versions

Hi Gert,

On Mon, 09 Jan 2023, Gert Doering wrote:
> So don't do OS updates.  But *do* update the probe software, automatically,
> and in normal intervals.

writing while wearing my hat as a RPM packager: I'm not really sure how
this shall work practically: If the probe software is run on regular (non-
hardware probe) systems, there are runtime dependencies to other software,
e.g. due to dynamic linking. Latter is encouraged by Linux distributions,
but might lead to the risk that a software probe update either installs a
new dependency (installs a new package) or updates a dependency due to e.g.
a ABI soversion bump. And an updated package can cause new issues to other
packages or software, especially on a poorly to not maintained system (I
assume here that a system that doesn't get software probe updates doesn't
get much updates at all). In the end, 

> I'm very much of the opinion that upgrades should not be an opt-in service,
> *and not even an opt-out*.

As much as I would like to see an always up-to-date software probe, I can
not think of a way conform to e.g. Fedora/EPEL packaging policies. Updates
of a package can not be enforced or triggered by the package itself. Other
ways would be user-written cronjobs/systemd.timers or administrators using
yum-updatesd/dnf-automatic - but that's nothing a RPM package in Fedora/
EPEL is allowed to influence/configure/change during its own installation.

My suggestion is to provide documentation how system administrators who set
up software probes can easily configure automatic system updates. But these
are practically often disliked by administrators (from my point of view).


Regards,
  Robert
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