Major Update and User Config

Michael A. Peters mpeters at mac.com
Sun Apr 30 21:22:38 UTC 2006


As most of you are probably aware, pan is rising from the dead.

I have the 0.9x series in rawhide (it's not ready yet for general
consumption) and am using it myself on FC5 - and even though it is rough
in a few spots, it is much faster and better overall.

There is one issue - the user configuration format has drastically
changed, and upstream doesn't want to write code to migrate the user
settings. So an update will result in loss of all settings, including
subscribed newsgroups and filters and even the users newsgroup
connection settings.

Are there policies about putting those kinds of updates into non devel
repos?

On the one hand - anyone using current pan who isn't aware that this
will happen will lose all of their settings, on the other hand - that is
going to happen with an upgrade to FC6 anyway - and (once pan releases
stable) the sooner the new version gets in, the less people will install
the old the pan and spend time setting it up just to have to do it
again. And the new pan really is light years ahead of the old pan.

My preference as packager would be to bite the bullet, and a week or so
after the new stable release (watching the pan user list for potential
problems) push it into both fc4 and fc5 - but if the lack of
configuration thing is a major problem, perhaps that shouldn't be done.

Opinions?




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