[Libreoffice] LibreOffice config migration

[Michael Meeks]

Hi guys,

	Soo - I'm trying to understand and summarize where we are, and the
basic problems so we can make a good decision; here are some of them
that I see:

	A. Config migration is not 100% reliable, sometimes it gives you
	   a broken config; if you remove your config - but the
	   migration is automatic - you get no way to fix it.
		A2. Thus if we do this automatically, it can give the
		    impression that OO.o is 'just broken' / 'does not
		    work at all' - where in fact, we just somehow
		    corrupted an old settings directory.

	B. No config migration gives a problematic user experience
	   whereby you loose your settings (or macros, or ...) between
	   versions.

	So - here is my suggestion ;-) hopefully it annoys everybody, and it is
two-fold.

	1. we trawl for broken configuration settings in the code,
	   and work to harden the code against bad configurations so
	   it at least does not crash.
		+ perhaps we could add an EasyHack to do some fuzzing
		  of the new XML config stuff as a start.

	2. we continue to do automatic config migration since this is
	   a commonly desired use-case
	*but*
	   as we migrate the settings the first time, we write into the
	   (original - ie. the old version)'s directory a stamp file
	   that says "these have been imported"
	*and*
	   if the same version is run again with the new settings
	   directory removed (ie. someting went wrong); we prompt the
	   user on the second time:
		"do you want to (re-)import settings from ABC install"

	How does that sound as a compromise ? that way - hopefully we test the
migration code some more (although I agree this piece is hard to QA),
and we avoid annoying our users with dialogs on updates.

	However - if the user does a migration and discovers their LibreOffice
is really broken: they are -no worse off- than they would have been
before had they selected the 'migrate' option: ie. they need to go and
remove their settings directory. Next time they run - they will get
prompted.

	How does that sound ? or am I missing some requirements /
problems ? :-)

	Thanks,

		Michael.

-- 
 michael.meeks at novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot