Re: [Evolution-hackers] evolution .desktop file

[Mark Gordon <mtgordon ximian com>]

On Fri, 2005-09-09 at 00:50 +0800, Not Zed wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 10:23 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
> > On Wed, September 7, 2005 09:37, Not Zed wrote:
> > >
> > > Sounds like a design issue with the panel to me.  Why should it
> > > hard-code any applications at all?  And if it does hard-code them, then
> > > it can hard-code the appropriate one for that gnome version i guess.
> > 
> > Because we want to have default launchers on the panel for the most used
> > applications, ie web browser and e-mail client.
> > 
> > And we can't change this at every release cycle since this is the
> > configuration for the user: when the user upgrades to GNOME 2.14, his
> > nice evolution-2.4 launcher will disappear if we hard-code the version
> > in the desktop filename.
> 
> Umm, why can't you change it each release cycle?  you've got 6 months to
> change the name.  Is that not long enough?  Would you like more time?

Here's the scenario:

- User logs into Gnome 2.x for the first time and gets a shiny new panel
launcher that's hard-coded to invoke evolution-2.y
- User upgrades to the new stable Gnome 2.x+2, and the previously
existing panel launcher stops working, since it points to evolution-2.y,
but the machine now has evolution-2.y+2 installed.  Maybe a new user
would get a shiny new panel launcher for evolution-2.y+2, but users
existing before the upgrade are out of luck.

The obvious solution is:
- Don't hard-code evolution versions in default panel launchers; have
them invoke "evolution", which should be a symlink to the latest stable
version.
- Avoid hard-coding evolution versions in launchers in the menus, since
they can be dragged to the panel or the desktop, where they will bitrot.
- If we need an "evolution unstable" launcher, that should also invoke a
symlink that can be updated when a new unstable version is released.

-Mark Gordon