Arch Linux

First off, I filed with the incorrect severity/category here (https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/68367) and cannot find a way to edit it, so please close that one if possible.

Description:

It may have always been this way, and I just never noticed before, but when running:

pacman -Syu

To perform the full system upgrade, after the download step, during the package installation step, the files in /boot required to boot the system are removed until new files are added via the post install hooks (mkinitcpio process).

What this means is that if the pacman -Syu is interrupted in some way (I believe I had done a C-c to cancel it the first time I observed this) and then reboot the machine, having never finished the pacman upgrade, the computer will be in an unbootable state and the user will be required to boot with an alternative method (bootable USB etc.) and finish the upgrade from an arch-chroot.

Shouldn't the system always remain in a bootable state, even if the pacman process is killed early, or if perhaps power was lost or the machine restarted during the upgrade?

Why not version one previous kernel, or at least ensure the final step is atomic in some way (old file not removed before new file is put in place). This time gap for a large system upgrade can be over 10 minutes, so it is not a small timing issue (there are no /boot files for start up in that directory the entire time the packages are upgraded prior to the post install hooks running).