[Moin-user] Why oh why!

[Thomas Waldmann]

Hi Pierre,

I am sorry that you had a bad upgrading experience, but please note:

We provide documentation and expect that people read them (especially,
but not limited to, when doing major upgrades).

docs/CHANGES contains docs about every noteworthy change we do,
including some pointers to some other documentations in docs/* that help
you with upgrading your config and migration your data to new moin
version.

Maybe it is a bit a fundamental problem of linux distributions that they
make it very comfortable to install new code (without reading the docs),
but OTOH, they don't migrate your wiki data to the new version.

When manually upgrading moin, users usually search for some docs first
about how to do that (and then they do it manually, but completely).

So how can we improve the situation?
 * you need to read the docs before doing major upgrades (especially for
moin, but maybe even take that as a general rule)
 * maybe have a backup so you can go back if something unexpected
happens
 * if something goes wrong or you are stuck, ask for help earlier - we
have a IRC channel, a wiki and a mailing list, usually someone can help
you very quickly
 * you could file a bug in Debian against the moin package pointing out
that problem. Maybe just a simple hint like "You MUST
read /usr/share/moin/docs/CHANGES for important hints about upgrading."
done with "dialog" (as other packages sometime point out stuff or query
stuff from the user) would avoid such desasters for Debian (and likely
also for Ubuntu) users.

Short comment about "switch for supporting legacy syntax": there is none
- but we have migration scripts doing most of the conversion
automatically.

We did it that way due to the following reasons:
 * the old link markup was a pain (too complicated, some stuff users
expected did not work, some stuff worked differently as users expected,
not very regular)
 * the code implementing that link parsing was even worse and we wanted
to get rid of it (not keep it and make it switchable)
 * Because of changing how spaces and underscores are handled, there was
no way of just keeping the old link syntax, we had to change it somehow
to sanely support names with blanks (AND with underscores).
 * the new link markup is different (you and your users need to read
HelpOnLinking), but much easier and much more powerful. I am sure you'll
like it after you've used it for a while.

Finally, as Reimar already pointed out, you maybe want to look at 1.8.x
releases - this is especially true if many of your users use the GUI
editor with recent browsers.

In 1.8, the GUI editor got a major upgrade and now works better with
those browsers. Also some bugs in the converter where fixed. This was
the Summer of Code 2008 project of Moon Byeongweon, a student from South
Korea, who worked for some months on these improvements.


Cheers,

Thomas