[Moin-user] Why oh why!

[Rick Vanderveer]

Pierre,

In addition to everything Thomas and Reimer said, I'd like to add that I
personally keep up with the current releases, and try to document the major
changes and upgrade steps which many find useful.  It's also linked directly
from the MoinMoinDownload page, so it's easy to find.  :-)

http://moinmo.in/RickVanderveer/UpgradingFromMoin15ToMoin16

Some hints:
 - The guides are helpful, but they're still no excuse for reading the
DOCS/changes, that's were the real details are. My guide just helps will
specific examples, the order of steps, etc., which will get up and running
quickly.

 - perform the steps in order.  It's probably easier to go from 1.5 to 1.6
to 1.7 to 1.8, than it is to jump from 1.5 to 1.8.

 - The biggest, most painful jump is from 1.5 to 1.6.  Once you get past
that, the rest are easy.  For *next* time, I suggest doing a dry-run on a
back-up of the actual site (either on another machine, or using a virtual
machine such as VMware or VirtualBox).

 - Now that you're on the path of upgrading, I do recommend going all the
way to 1.8.  I too have mostly novice users, and was able to finally make
the GUI editor the default editor, which my users *love* (and my technical
folk are able to easily switch to the text editor for more power and
control).  The GUI editor alone makes the upgrade worth it (as it finally
silences those who complain that the wiki is "too hard" (we all know those
types)).

Hope this helps.  And please don't hesitate to contact this list if you get
stuck!

-Rick



On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 4:54 AM, Thomas Waldmann <tw-public at gmx.de> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
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