Re: [Evolution-hackers] XDG Base Directories -- Wrapping Up

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Sat, 2010-07-24 at 07:48 +0200, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> An an evolution user and a packager, is this really a good idea?
> Shouldn't it be safer to keep it “as a backup” but mark it as already
> migrated. This way, another attempt can be tried should the first one
> fail, and we don't touch user valuable data.

Are you suggesting we copy the data instead of moving it?  That could be
a -lot- of data.  It also runs a higher risk of failure since the user's
hard drive may not have enough free space for a copy.  The migration at
present is just a scripted sequence of rename() and rmdir() commands.

The problem is we have three binaries writing data there.  Two of those
have no user interface, and may start long before you launch Evolution
itself.  So the migration needs to happen in phases, and I don't see a
way to warn the user ahead of time.  By the time you start Evolution,
the data may already be 2/3 migrated by the D-Bus services.

That said, I'm open to ideas for making the process safer.  Especially
for the case where the user tries to downgrade and then panics because
Evolution suddenly can't find his data.  Should Evolution present a big
scary warning at startup if it sees (from GConf) that a later version
was previously run?