How do I upgrade to the release version of 16.04 if I am running Beta?

Question

OS: Ubuntu Xenial Xerus (development branch) (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-18-generic x86_64)

Hi I've installed and configured the final beta of 16.04 and I see it says (development branch). When the official version is released will it automatically update to the production release version when I run one of the following:

• apt-get upgrade
• do-release-upgrade
• apt-get dist-upgrade

Do I have to modify something to start pulling from the prod/release branch when it's officially released?

The box is stable and working well. Will I be able to maintain the current configuration or will a complete re-install be needed?

Answer 1

Once 16.04 is released running:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Will do the trick, no need for do-release-upgrade (that won't actually do anything because you are already using 16.04, so there is nowhere to upgrade to). There shouldn't need to be anything else to change, anything that does need changing should be done for you automatically.

And just as a side note, sudo apt-get dist-upgrade upgrades many things in addition to all that sudo apt-get upgrade does, so no need to run both, the dist-upgrade option covers both of them as stated in the manpage (man apt-get):

dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade,
           also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions
           of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and
           it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the
           expense of less important ones if necessary. The dist-upgrade
           command may therefore remove some packages. The
           /etc/apt/sources.list file contains a list of locations from which
           to retrieve desired package files. See also apt_preferences(5) for
           a mechanism for overriding the general settings for individual
           packages.