[Pan-users] Re: Import from Old Version

[Duncan]

Mike - EMAIL IGNORED
<address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sun, 22 Jul
2007 08:45:04 -0400:

> On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 08:58:30 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> FWIW, note that there's nothing
>> from pan's side keeping you from having both old-pan and new-pan
>> installed together on the same computer -- you just have to rename one
>> of them. That's actually what I did here.  Before I upgraded to
>> new-pan, I renamed the old-pan binary to pan.14.  Then the old package
>> was removed when the new one was installed, but I still had the binary
>> around, and it still worked.  That way, I can keep both running, in
>> case someone has questions I need to load it up to answer, on the old
>> version still.
> 
> I like this idea, but I am upgrading from FC4 to FC7, and intend do a
> clean install of FC7.  I would therefore have to do something like
>    "yum install old-pan"
> How can I do this?

I'm not a Fedora user tho I did formerly use an rpm based system, back on 
Mandrake, so I know a bit about how it works.  So you'll need to go 
elsewhere for the details if necessary, but here's the general idea...

Just save off the old pan binary somewhere before you upgrade.  I'd 
suggest putting it with your local scripts and the like, that collection 
of non-distribution and site-specific administrative and helper scripts 
and binaries that most admins eventually collect.  The standard location 
for such things is /usr/local, so for a binary such as this, 
/usr/local/bin.  Here, I keep /usr/local on its own partition, much as 
one would keep the personal settings and files in /home on its own 
partition and may save off /etc to a backup somewhere before the upgrade, 
precisely so it /can/ be kept around thru an upgrade.

For pan itself, the binary is all you need.  For the dependencies, they 
are similar enough between versions, both being GTK2 based, you shouldn't 
have much problem there, with a couple of possible exceptions.  
pan-0.14.x required gnet-2.x while new-pan doesn't, so you'll have to 
make sure that's installed on your upgrade.  Since you won't have the old-
pan package installed, only the binary, if nothing else you install 
requires gnet (2.x, not 1.x), you'll have to install it manually yourself.

Eventually there'll be other bigger dependencies to worry about, mainly 
glibc and that your old pan and newer system are built against the same 
glibc major version.  However, that's /probably/ not going to be an issue 
for some time.  (I say /probably/ because I know binary compatibility 
issues often occur when source compatibility remains fine.  Since I'm on 
Gentoo, a from-source distribution, all such issues mean here is a revdep-
rebuild and I've not had to worry about the finer details that often nab 
folks trying to use binaries cross-binary-distribution-version.  That 
said, glibc has been relatively stable for awhile, no major version 
changes, so I /think/ things remain fine.)

If the older pan were C++ based as is newer pan, there'd be GCC version 
related libstdc++ versioning issues as well.  However, pan 0.14 was C 
based and thus didn't require libstdc++, so at least there's not that 
issue to worry about.  That's a good thing, since it'd be a potential 
deal-breaker on a binary distribution.

So in summary... gnet 2.x is the only big dependency you should have to 
worry about.  There are potentially others down the road a way, but I 
don't /think/ they'll bite at this time, and likely not for another few 
distribution versions.

Don't forget to rename the old pan binary, however, or you may get a bit 
confused trying to keep the two separate.

One more thing.  The above doesn't address the GUI menu situation.  Your 
new pan package will put pan in the menu as usual.  Old-pan, you can 
either create your own menu entry for, or simply run it from the run 
dialog or a terminal window.  I run it seldom enough here that running it 
from the run dialog is my preferred method.  However, if you are still 
running old-pan regularly, you may want to create a memu entry for it.  I 
could tell you how to do it for KDE if necessary.  Other environments 
such as GNOME, you'll need to look elsewhere.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman