Re: [RFC] Renaming the user-setup templates

Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> writes:

> On Friday 29 June 2007 18:47, Otavio Salvador wrote:
>> Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> writes:
>> > On Friday 29 June 2007 16:58, Otavio Salvador wrote:
>> >> Well, we can do not guarantee it but if it's simple (and on this
>> >> case it's) we could provide it.
>> >
>> > For all eternity? Don't see the point really.
>>
>> Sure not. At least for lenny release and then we can drop them again.
>
> Please explain why the compatibility issue would be any less after lenny
> then for etch->lenny?

It would be more or less as deprecated API on libraries. We would support it and drop it after some time.

> In this case it would maybe be possible, but keeping compatibility here
> would mean that we would be morally obliged to keep compatibility for
> _any_ changes affecting preseeding and I'd be willing to bet that in
> other cases that really would mean we would have to include really
> strange/complex hacks or that it would just be impossible [1]. Should we
> then just postpone the change until after the lenny release?
> I do not think it is worth it to limit ourselves like that.
>
> I really do not think it is worth keeping compatibility on one minor area
> when we can expect major changes in preseeding in general anyway between
> now and the lenny release. You should not look at this in isolation, but
> as part of all changes likely to happen between now and lenny.

partman is where I do think it might be very difficult to keep it compatible since some changes are too complex and difficult to simulate previous behaviour.

Basically, user-setup is a very simple case and we might keep some code on its postinst to handle with previous templates and warning the user printing something at syslog but I agree that full compatibility is difficult to get.

But I'm chaning my mind and I currently agree with you that the effort will be too big to support it and supporting it partially won't be a big win (even worse, it'll be a bit confusing that some works and others fail) and then I agree we ought to document them and not provide any backward compatibility layer.

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