Re: Rolling upgradability (was: Gnome 1.0.40 really screwed up my system)

[Dan Hensley <dan hensley att net>]

Erik Walthinsen wrote:

> On 2 Oct 1999, Jacob Berkman wrote:
>
> > This is because panel data is now stored globally.  This is so that
> > people won't lose their session data in the rare case of a panel
> > crash.  You'll be better off in the long run.  Sorry for the
> > inconvience.  :)

Oh, ok.  It's not that big a deal, since my panel(s) are easy to reconfigure,
but I thought it was strange.

> I assume some sort of tool will be provided for all the people attempting
> to run GNOME in a stable manner to be able to upgrade to September GNOME
> without having to reconfigure their entire environment from defaults?
>
> Not paying attention to issues like this will get September GNOME lots of
> bad press, when people realize that 'upgrading' will obliterate their
> configurations.  Rolling upgrades are absolutely necessary in any stable
> series, preferably automatically (i.e. the panel starts, says 'this looks
> old', fires off the conversion tool, and goes on running).

I completely agree!  I think this is something that absolutely should be in
1.0.50.  I can understand 1.0.40 being incomplete since it's a beta designed
to flush out bugs, but whenever there's a change in format there should be a
seamless upgrade from the old format to the new.  It should also probably say
something like "old panel format detected--do you want to upgrade it?".  If
yes, then all is good.  If no, then keep asking each time the panel gets
launched, and probably also whenever a panel configuration occurs.

Dan