[Mailman-Developers] Betas coming soon

[Ricardo Kustner]

Hi,

On Tue, Mar 21, 2000 at 12:58:21AM -0500, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
> releasing the new betas.  Mailman should now lazily update it's old
> pending requests "database" to the new style external requests.db
> file.  Wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
ah great :)

> While I'm pretty sure upgrading will work, I really need feedback from
> you beta testers.  For now, I'd say you should be careful upgrading
> any operational site, but on the other hand I want to encourage you to
> test this stuff as much as possible.  All feedback is welcome.
I'm using the CVS version already in production so I won't have trouble
switching to the beta...

> 1) I've thought about being really parental about the upgrade, by
>    essentially forcing people to read the UPGRADING file before "make"
>    will succeed.  I think I have a trick that will work, but I'm not
>    sure it's a good idea.  On the one hand it /might/ (only might)
>    save lazy or novice upgraders some headaches by forcing them to
>    read the manual first.
>    they're doing.  So, do you think it would be a good idea to force
>    everyone to read UPGRADING before "make" succeeds?
I've seen software packages solving this by needing to enter a "magic"
key with the make command before being able to do the install... and the
key could be found in the install docs... 
You could also specifically ask the user if he/she read the UPGRADING
file with a y/n prompt before proceeding with the actual install.
Also, what about including a backup procedure with the install, so
you can revert the install with 'make install restore-original'...?
BUT all this seems a lot of work, just for being helpful to lazy people
who take the risk of not reading the upgrade docs :)
I think a y/n prompt could be enough... if the user then decides to ignore
the BIG FLASHY WARNING TO READ THE UPGRADING FILE then so be it...

> Watch for the final round of checkins some time (hopefully) this week.

could you let us know on this list when this has been done? then I can do
a CVS update of my version... and then see how much of my own hacks
i have to put back in.

I'm looking forward to bug squatting the betas... :)

Thanks for doing a great job, Barry!

Ricardo.

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