[Gnumed-devel] Re: apt-get update (was Re: Gnumed-update)

[Andreas Tille]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 03:09:14PM -0700, James Busser wrote:
> On Debian, can a regular user (lacking sudo and root access) update a piece 
> of software, i.e. their gnumed-client, or would the user be limited to (for 
> example) downloading tarballs?

It depends what you mean as "regular user".  If the admin has granted 
permissions
via sudo the user in question can do

     sudo apt-get install ...

> Does apt-get update <a newer client> cause a loss of the user's prior local 
> .config files, or do these get copied into the new client (an answer which 
> surely is distro-packager-dependent)?

There is no clean way for apt-get to fiddle around with user directories,
so the answer is no, every user is responsible for his own config files.
What we could do is the following: At installation time print a notice
(to the person who actually installs! - no idea whether this is sufficient)
what every GNUmed user has to do.  Please prepear a reasonable text for
display if you think this is reasonable and I can do this.
 
> If ordinarily copied, might they in some scenario need to be *not* copied, in 
> case some structure or syntax in the config needs changing (or is this 
> unlikely to happen)?

IMHO this question becomes void considering my answer above.
 
> When a user would apt-get-or-equivalent update to a newer gnumed-client, and 
> if the newer gnumed client would refuse to run (owing to a wait for a db 
> fixup), what would have happened to the old client? Would it have been 
> overwritten?

Currently there are no means undertaken to install two clients in
parallel.  You can forcibly downgrade to the old client package and
if reasonably done (see above) your old user configuration was not
lost.
 
> If we set aside people with the adeptness to run from tarballs, what recourse 
> is suggested for the simpler user to recover from a premature apt-get client 
> update? Must the user do apt-get remove, and then apt-get install 
> the-earlier-version, and then regenerate their local preferences through any 
> combination of

Also apt-get remove/purge has no influence on user configurations
because apt-get does not touch /home at all.

Hope this helps

    Andreas.

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