Policy for dealing with webapps' datafiles?

[Gerhard Schmidt]

On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 04:03:46PM +0300, Andrew P. wrote:
> Many applications, particularly web applications,
> store data in xml, text or binary files. They come
> with an initial set of files, so that we can start
> using them right away - without the need to create
> anything (which might even be unsupported).
> 
> So, you install a forum, a calendar or something
> else, use it, like it - but when you run portupgrade
> all your data is gone.
> 
> It seems that the most harmless way to deal with
> it is to leave potentially valuable files untouched
> during deinstall, and echo a message about it. It's
> ugly and reminds me of debian apt, but we've got
> to deal with it one way or another.
> 
> Does anyone have a bright idea about this? I
> searched some mailing lists, but never saw one
> big discussion on this.

Some Ports install this files as .sample files and copy them to their name
if they don't exist. On deinstall only the .sample file is deinstalled
and on reinstall the new file will be installed as .sample and your old 
file will stay in place, and no data is lost. 

I think this is a very elegant way to handle such problems. 

Bye
	Estartu

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gerhard Schmidt    | Nick : estartu      IRC : Estartu  |
Fischbachweg 3     |                                    |  PGP Public Key
86856 Hiltenfingen | EMail: estartu at augusta.de          |  on request 
Germany            | 					|  
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