Re: When will F-Spot be "ready"?

[Gabriel Burt <gabriel burt gmail com>]

On 1/7/06, Noel Llopis <nll_pub convexhull com> wrote:
> By ready, I mean that an end user can start putting thousands of pictures
> without fear of the database format changing and having to start over.
>
> Because, frankly, I don't mind if it crashes sometimes, or if something is a
> bit rough. But if the database format can change without an upgrade path,
> F-Spot is completely useless for me (and many other people I suspect), so
> you're going to be missing a lot of feedback and real-world use cases.

It is my understanding that the developers are already commited to not
changing the database schema without providing automatic upgrades to
exising useres.  I have a lot of the code necessary to do this
written, hopefully we'll get it in soon.

> Also, just out of curiosity, what makes it so hard to provide an upgrade
> path for older database formats? I'm not a database expert, but it seems
> like a pretty straightforward thing to do assuming it's a priority.

It's not rocket science, but it's not trivial either.  Since sqlite
doesn't support ALTER TABLE instructions it takes a bit more effort
than you might think.  And people may be upgrading from two db schema
versions ago, etc.

It is a priority though, and I expect that it will be made official policy soon.

Gabriel Burt