Re: migrating to new backend format

[hellan acm org]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 04:48:27PM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-10-05 at 16:29, Chipzz wrote:
> > but ~/.gconf26 is _UGLY_ ...
> 
> Only way out of that is to avoid extending the format. None of the three
> options get you out of it.
> 
> We may be able to think of a nicer name than .gconf26.

How about only using the new format for fresh installations? If there
is an existing tree in the old format, keep using that. Only new users
will benefit, but hopefully, these will outnumber old users in the
long run.

To eventually get rid of the old format, I see two ways. They can be
used in combination.

1. A utility to switch per user or per site.
2. Doing the conversion automatically in 2.8. 

2. Means that you will be able to switch painlessly between 2.6 and 2.4,
and between 2.8 and 2.6, but not between 2.8 and 2.4. In the first
2.case, both will use the old format. In the second case, 2.8 will
2.automatically convert to the new format, which 2.6 understands.

At the expense of keeping around code for both formats. But I see no
way around that.

Regards

Jon Kåre