Re: [Libreoffice] LibreOffice config migration

Hi guys,

        Soo - I'm trying to understand and summarize where we are, and the
basic problems so we can make a good decision; here are some of them
that I see:

        A. Config migration is not 100% reliable, sometimes it gives you
           a broken config; if you remove your config - but the
           migration is automatic - you get no way to fix it.
                A2. Thus if we do this automatically, it can give the
                    impression that OO.o is 'just broken' / 'does not
                    work at all' - where in fact, we just somehow
                    corrupted an old settings directory.

        B. No config migration gives a problematic user experience
           whereby you loose your settings (or macros, or ...) between
           versions.

        So - here is my suggestion ;-) hopefully it annoys everybody, and it is
two-fold.

        1. we trawl for broken configuration settings in the code,
           and work to harden the code against bad configurations so
           it at least does not crash.
                + perhaps we could add an EasyHack to do some fuzzing
                  of the new XML config stuff as a start.

        2. we continue to do automatic config migration since this is
           a commonly desired use-case
        *but*
           as we migrate the settings the first time, we write into the
           (original - ie. the old version)'s directory a stamp file
           that says "these have been imported"
        *and*
           if the same version is run again with the new settings
           directory removed (ie. someting went wrong); we prompt the
           user on the second time:
                "do you want to (re-)import settings from ABC install"

        How does that sound as a compromise ? that way - hopefully we test the
migration code some more (although I agree this piece is hard to QA),
and we avoid annoying our users with dialogs on updates.

        However - if the user does a migration and discovers their LibreOffice
is really broken: they are -no worse off- than they would have been
before had they selected the 'migrate' option: ie. they need to go and
remove their settings directory. Next time they run - they will get
prompted.

        How does that sound ? or am I missing some requirements /
problems ? :-)

        Thanks,

                Michael.

-- 
 michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot