[pulseaudio-discuss] [OT] Re: RFC: Database formats on upgrade - auto-convert and save or just auto-convert

[Xavier Bestel]

On Mon, 2011-09-05 at 14:44 +0100, John Haxby wrote:
> On 05/09/11 12:47, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> > Not good. There's a not-so-uncommon scenario which is the NFS-mounted
> > $HOME shared between desktops with differing versions (for instance,
> > where I work we have a mix of RHEL4, RHEL5 & RHEL6).
> >
> > To correctly handle that situation, db formats should of course be
> > backward & forward compatible, but if it's not possible at least not
> > write to disk the new format if possible.
> 
> You've got more problems that just PA then.   For example, some Firefox
> addons won't be compatible between the different versions, some binaries
> that you have in your home directory (or a subdirectory thereof) are
> going to need be built on RHEL4 and have the corresponding compat- stuff
> installed (even if it's available).   The list of cross-release
> compatibilities is endless -- I know because I get bitten by it
> regularly -- and I don't think that the PA database format even comes
> close to being tricky.

Concretely there aren't so many troubles. FF needs to be installed
someplace else, sure, but the default install works for all platforms.
Everything else works, more or less - probably because we mostly use
in-house dev tools.

	Xav