RE: System wide configurations

[Schirmacher, Rolf]

If you are not a developer, but simply a user of a binary distribution (and
to make things worse, assume working with windows and having no
administrative rights :-(, then there is a problem how to update to a new
release.

The traditional, clean approach for naive windows users is 
- uninstall octave x.x.old
- install octave x.x.new
Something like this was often requested to do some system clean up before
starting a new installation. Having 2 releases of one software package in
parallel without problems is still not that common on some systems...

But then, everything under $prefix might/will be gone :-(
This includes all changes you did to your files (o.k., you should have send
patches to improve octave for all...) and also any kind of site/machine
specific configuration, e.g. in $prefix/share/octave/site. Nevertheless
$prefix/share/octave/site sounds like the right place for such
configurations and probably they should not get lost when updating to octave
x.x.new ...

Simply running install on an existing installation on the other hand is
often not a good idea either. You might end up with a mixture which might be
difficult to clean up later.

So, which directories shoud be preserved and how should it be done best? How
to make this simple for the users described at the beginning of this mail?

Rolf

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John W. Eaton [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 8:22 PM
> To: Petr Gajdos
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: System wide configurations
> 
> 
> On 31-Oct-2007, Petr Gajdos wrote:
> 
> | > I see no justification for the Octave build process to 
> install files
> | > in /etc.  Everything should go under $prefix.  If you are 
> packaging
> | > Octave for some particular OS and it makes sense for that 
> system to
> | > have some files in /etc, then that is your choice, but I 
> don't think
> | > the Octave build process should be set up that way.
> | 
> | > jwe
> | 
> | It was wrong question, sorry. Again and hopefully better: 
> which files should 
> | be preserved during update?
> 
> What do you mean by "update"?
> 
> jwe
>