Not a major problem, either way.
My seed phrase is there if needed, and I can stay on 4.2.
I just thought it useful to raise the question, as I had not come across the issue/feature before.
Is this an expected behaviour? Am I now forced to use 4.2 forever? I didn't see any warnings about this.
I could recreate the wallet for 4.1.5 using the seed phrase, but that loses the transaction descriptions.
Well,
the release notes don't seem to tell anything specific about it, but normally, if one wants to keep everything untouched at an upgrade test, he can backup everything before updating.
I didn't see that message (I also didn't get to update yet), but it seems that yes, the only choices seem to be that you either keep using 4.2 (I see no real reason for going back, actually) and keep your labels, either go back to 4.1.5 by recovering from seed and lose those labels.
As a rule of thumb, I would not get too "attached" to those labels, there's always a chance that something goes wrong and you have to recover from seed. Not a big chance, but still...
I saw another thread explaining how to export and import labels.
A wallet backup running on the older version 4.1.5, let me export the labels (menu option). I then imported these labels into the wallet running on the new version 4.2
I now have what I want - wallet on newest version, and labels too.
[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]