Upgrading to a new release

The upgrade to new release procedure at https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Upgrading_Alpine is overly complicated when it comes to iSH, since iSH is its own kernel. It can be entirely ignored.

Latest is not always best in the iSH case

When upgrading, it is often tempting to go for the latest release. In the case of iSH a bit of caution would be wise. I have used 3.18 since it came out and only experienced a vim startup glitch, just a set of error messages every time I started and exited it, but once in it worked fine. That was resolved by ISH dev team fairly quickly. But I have several colleagues that still prefer to stay on 3.16, since their apps work fine there, but they see issues with them in 3.18

A new release typically is based on a newer kernel, with that comes that the apps are compiled for that kernel, and thus the higher the release number, the more likely the expected kernel will be using features not yet implemented in iSH.

Its not black or white, like a certain release can not be used at all, its more of a sliding scale. Where apps demanding a lot from the cpu, tend to be heavily optimized and are quick to use new kernel features. Whilst most apps have not changed, and thus they will typically work the same as in previous releases, unless a library they depend on now uses non iSH-compatible kernel features.

As new releases come out, some early adopters try it right away, they often find what apps that previously worked in iSH now fail. If that is your game, go for it! And pretty please report if you find things that used to work now failing!

If your iSH focus is more that you run certain apps and want to ensure they still work, then checking the Discord or googling things like: ish alpine v3.18 go Will indicate if your important apps have issues with a certain new release.

Regardless of your usage style, as long as you did that backup, you might as well try the latest and see if things still work for you. If not import the backup and upgrade to less bleeding edge release.

Be aware that the way Alpine is setup, there is no downgrade path, so once you have committed to a new release there is no way back, except for a full reinstall.

Select a new release

All you need to do is point to a new release and do a regular apk upgrade

Please be aware that you need to use one of the official Alpine repositories for this to work. If you still use the initial iSH repository, you are recommended to first follow the procedure listed in Using Alpine Linux repositories

All you need to do to upgrade for example from 3.14 to 3.16 or 3.18 is to edit /etc/apk/repositories and change the numbers into the release you want.

In case you are unfamiliar with how to edit the file, you can re-use the snippet from Use an official Alpine repository, replacing the release number with the release you want to upgrade into before pasting.

Do the upgrade!

type: apk upgrade && apk fix

You are recommended to reboot once this is completed.