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Re: preserving window manager selection on upgrades.



[Sorry for the wide personal copying; let's restrict further discussion to
-devel]

On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 07:05:16PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Mon, May 15, 2000 at 04:13:55PM -0700, Ben Gertzfield wrote:
> >     Daniel>   Will this affect people upgrading directly from slink
> >     Daniel> (whose window-manager preferences won't yet be stored via
> >     Daniel> alternatives)?  Or is there stuff in the scripts to try to
> >     Daniel> preserve settings?
> > 
> > I'm pretty sure when I upgraded from slink that my window manager
> > settings were silently ignored and I had to explore for a while to
> > figure out about the new update-alternatives setup. (I could be
> > misremembering, though.)
> 
> Ouch. We should fix that... Maybe xfree86-common could do something like
> this in its postinst:
> 
> if [ "$2" ] && dpkg --compare-versions "$2" lt 3.3.2.3a; then
>   wm=$(grep "^[^ *#]" /etc/X11/window-managers 2>/dev/null | head -1)
>   if [ "$wm" ]; then 
>     update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-window-manager \
>       x-window-manager $wm 100
>   fi
> fi
> 
> Branden, what do you think?

Not a bad idea.  Although most, if not all, window managers have upgraded
to the new mechanism, we can't (and shouldn't try to) constrain
miscellaneous incremental upgrades.

With some tweaks, I will include the above modification in 3.3.6-7.  For
instance, the version comparison should be changed.

> Actually, it's easy to use now, just do `update-alternatives --config
> x-window-manager'. But of course, you'd first have to know the name of the
> alternative... so it better be done automatically on upgrade.

I do think it is a better idea to manage X window managers with the
established alternatives mechanism rather than with a unique mechanism.
Older users may grumble at the transition, but new users will be glad that
the alternatives mechanism has broad applicability once they've learned it.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson            |    Men use thought only to justify their
Debian GNU/Linux               |    wrong doings, and speech only to conceal
branden@ecn.purdue.edu         |    their thoughts.
roger.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |    -- Voltaire

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