Re: [Lynx-dev] unpacked directory name

[Philip Webb]

080518 Stefan Caunter wrote:
> I don't like this idea.
> The last time I did not mention anything about this kind of change
> /usr/local/lib got changed to /usr/local/etc for lynx.cfg.

That's a very different issue: that changed a regular dir name,
this prevents a newly unpacked tar file clobbering an existing dir.

> For me, this would create all kinds of directories I don't want.

Not all kinds, only one each time you upgrade
& you can easily remove the earlier ones, if you don't want to keep them.

> Changing this alters one of the earliest steps in an upgrade.
> Since the development version is inevitably the best version available,
> always recommended for any fix and is always rock solid,
> keeping the directory named for the major version number makes sense.

No, there have been cases where the latest dev version had a bug,
which took a short time to get fixed, so that the previous version
needed to continue being used in the meantime.  In any case,
it is generally a bad practice to remove an older version of anything
before making sure the new version works correctly
(yes, i know Gentoo's 'emerge' does exactly that,
but you can still tell it to re-install the previous one if necessary
& the Gentoo system software is doing all the work for you).

What happens at present is that an unwitting or forgetful user
unpacks the tar file & it overwrites files with the same name,
adds those with new names & leaves in place those which have been dropped.
You end up with a mixed-up dir which is useless
& you have to (re)move it & go thro' the tar step again.
If each new tar file is taken from a differently-named dir,
then each new version creates its own new dir on the user's machine,
everything is kept separate & the user can decide what to delete himself.
This seems to be the regular practice with other downloaded tars IIRC:
can you cite an exception ?

So I continue to ask for the change (smile).

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