There are a number of cases where this is not really possible. For some classes of updates, the structure of the underlying application and the type of update being made requires that you do an "all or nothing" type of update in order to get a buildable result. I've run into this a lot with Large Java applications where we have to jump several Spring versions just due to the scope of what's being updated. More incremental updates weren't an option for a number of time/architectural reasons and refactoring the application structure (which really wouldn't have helped too much either) would have been time and cost prohibitive... Really annoying but sometimes you just don't have another option to actually accomplish your goals.