Re: Release Notes - Proposed last minute changes
On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 11:31:05PM +0200, Frans Pop wrote:
> On Tuesday 31 May 2005 22:17, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > I think the intention is good but the wording is too scaring. Of course
> > every things should alwayd be backuped, but in the case at end it
> > should sufficient to backup the dotfiles and dotdirectories, especially
> > .mozilla and .kde.
>
> I was just about to commit this :-P
Next time send a warning 24h in advance stating you will send the final
patch tomorrow and we will have only 5 hours to comments. This give us
a chance to be online at just the right time.
> I thought about mentioning just dotfiles/dirs, but that is not really
> practical when you have multi user systems.
Not really, the users can make the backup themselves prior to start
using the computer after the upgrade.
If the admin backup the whole /home (which can be very large) on tape,
requesting a specific file can be unpractical (i.e. users will simply
not bother to ask the sysadmin to recover the file). On the other hand
the admin can just do something like
for i in /home/*; do mkdir $i/dot-backup; cp -a $i/.* $i/dot-backup;done
prior the upgrade and tell the user about dot-backup in the email
stating the system was upgraded.
> I'd also prefer to keep it general (i.e. not only mozilla and kde) as we
> don't know which other applications may behave in the same way.
I sincerely hope applications do no delete random users files.
In the current form, I find the advice too general to be usefull.
In my experience with woody to sarge upgrade, you are better off moving
old dotfiles away than to keep them because some applications work in
degraded mode with the old dotfiles.
> I'd be grateful for an alternative text, but I'll need to receive it
> within the next hour as I want to commit the changes because of
> translations.
Here my proposal:
+ <p>Debian upgrade process do not affect the <file>/home</file>
+ directory, so it is the users responsibility to backup and
+ update their configuration files. As a security, you may want to
+ backup all users dotfiles before the upgrade.
+ Some applications (e.g. mozilla, some KDE applications)
+ are known to overwrite existing user settings with new defaults
+ when a new version of the application is first started by a user.
+ The backup may help you to restore or recreate the old settings.</p>
Anyway, do what you think is best. You have made a great job so far, so
I am not worried. I am far more worried by my terrific english style
ending in the release notes.
Cheers,
Bill.
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