Patent ID: 8291402

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: sorting a list of installed hardware and software components of a computer system; creating a fingerprint from the sorted list of installed hardware and software components to represent a current state of the computer system; searching a data store of a plurality of precomputed upgrade plans for a precomputed upgrade plan that matches the fingerprint, each precomputed upgrade plan providing instructions to change a system configuration from a first consistent configuration comprising a first subset of a set of software packages to a second consistent configuration comprising a second subset of the set of software packages, the data store indexed by fingerprints; executing a dependency resolution procedure to create an upgrade plan if no precomputed upgrade plan matches the fingerprint and executing the created precomputed upgrade plan to update the current state of the computer system; and executing the matching precomputed upgrade plan to update the current state of the computer system without executing the dependency resolution procedure if a precomputed upgrade plan matches the fingerprint.