Migration Paths for New Modules

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

Three of our proposed modules replace existing
functionality in the desktop.  We need to think
about the migration path for our users.  How we
migrate has an effect on the documentation team
as well, so I would like a very clear statement
from the development teams about their plans.

Read:
http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/docs/gnome-deployments-2006/index.html#old-gnome

(Federico, you're my hero.)

Migration is more than just removing the old and
putting the new in everywhere the old was.  You
need to migrate configuration and user data.
(Especially user data.  This is more relevant
for Tomboy than Orca or Alacarte.)

We also need to make things as nice as possible
for people running different versions of Gnome
with the same NFS home directory.  I do this at
work, and it would be pretty sucky not to be
able to access my notes from one machine on
another.

(I know it seems like I'm picking on Tomboy
more here, but it just has the most difficult
migration hurdle in terms of data.)

Orca needs to have rock-solid migration from
Gnopernicus, because the people who use it
depend on it completely to use their desktops.

Alacarte has probably the easiest job here,
but I want to make sure that people will get
Alacarte whenever they ask for a menu editor.
A symlink in /usr/bin is probably sufficient.

There are likely other issues that smarter
hackers can enumerate.

--
Shaun