Questions on installed packages and upgrading Debian Stable.
 

Hi.

What happens to my installed packages when I eventually upgrade to Debian 9 Stable in mid-2017?

Do all my regular packages + backports + things like Chrome (installed from a .deb file) and anything installed from a .sh file remain intact?

Thanks.

Anything installed via a repository will be upgraded if an upgrade is necessary and available in the repository.

Deprecated packages, those whose dependencies can no longer be met, will not be upgraded. In the case of the latter you may be prompted from removal.

.deb packages installed manually, via dpkg or otherwise, may or may not be upgraded.

Applications installed by shell scripts or through make install will not be upgraded. Debian recommends using checkinstall for the latter, at least it will be tracked by APT, although very unlikely to be upgraded.

Cheers goumba for clarifying that.

Some of it depends on your /etc/apt/sources.list. Depending on how you set that up, you might have to change it to upgrade from 8 to 9. Most times I find the upgrade path to be more bandwidth than a fresh install. So I choose to do a fresh install.

Hi S7.

Would it be possible to download the Debian 9 ISO (in mid-2017) and upgrade Debian Jessie to that instead of upgrading online? I ask as if someone was upgrading online and the internet connection went down -- would that bork the whole system?

There's a thing called jigdo, that builds the debian .ISOs from current .deb packages. Which is about as close as you'll get to a full set of install CDs these days. But it's more of a snapshot in time than an official set. It's in the debian repos. With windows and other OS versions available online. I haven't used it in years, but it's worked way back when.