Hi,
Going from 16.8.0 to the latest 16.10 is fine, since it’s a direct upgrade. In this instance, the usual apt update command is fine.
However, if you attempted to do this, say you had Gitlab 16.1 installed, then you would have broken your Gitlab installation. I think now Gitlab has actually put in a function that checks the version and stops the upgrade of the package if the package version is too old. But either way, if your installation is old, it would be best to check the Gitlab Upgrade documentation first, to check the upgrade path. In this instance, when needing to follow the upgrade path you need to use the apt install commands. This link will help on that: GitLab Upgrade Path Resources