Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:30:57 +0300 From: "Andrew P." <infofarmer@gmail.com> To: Gerhard Schmidt <estartu@augusta.de> Cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Policy for dealing with webapps' datafiles? Message-ID: <cb5206420511140630p6d0e8487qbaec3611eee82960@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20051114141442.GA64766@augusta.de> References: <cb5206420511140503k6fd50244l82373b2d21023b86@mail.gmail.com> <20051114141442.GA64766@augusta.de>
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On 11/14/05, Gerhard Schmidt <estartu@augusta.de> wrote: > On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 04:03:46PM +0300, Andrew P. wrote: > > Many applications, particularly web applications, > > store data in xml, text or binary files. They come > > with an initial set of files, so that we can start > > using them right away - without the need to create > > anything (which might even be unsupported). > > > > So, you install a forum, a calendar or something > > else, use it, like it - but when you run portupgrade > > all your data is gone. > > > > It seems that the most harmless way to deal with > > it is to leave potentially valuable files untouched > > during deinstall, and echo a message about it. It's > > ugly and reminds me of debian apt, but we've got > > to deal with it one way or another. > > > > Does anyone have a bright idea about this? I > > searched some mailing lists, but never saw one > > big discussion on this. > > Some Ports install this files as .sample files and copy them to their nam= e > if they don't exist. On deinstall only the .sample file is deinstalled > and on reinstall the new file will be installed as .sample and your old > file will stay in place, and no data is lost. > > I think this is a very elegant way to handle such problems. That's cute when it is about 3-5 config files at max. But what about 15, 50, 100 files scattered around different directories? The whole concept of sample files is lost then. Then again, it's good for config files. A new sample is installed - and user can review new options and knobs. But what about data files? The user will never want to look at some cryptic XML scheme, so there's no point in sampling it.
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