On Mon 17 Mar 2003 19:41, David Walser posted as excerpted below: > That looks like more work to manage, both for us, and for sysadmins. > Also, there is precedent for this kind of renaming. Just one > off-the-top of my head example, gd2->gd. There are lots other.
I think the reason behind the number suffixes is that it enables deploying both at once, in some instances. This is handy during beta testing of the new version, where it might not be so good to entirely replace the stable old version just yet. An example I'm familiar with... Mdk 8.1 (my original install, well, not my first one, but the one I switched over from MSWormOS with) deployed KDE 2.x as KDE. When KDE 3 initially came out, they deployed it as KDE3, in the KDE-std /opt location rather than the Mdk-std /usr/ location, so KDE 2 stable and KDE 3 beta could be installed side-by-side. Now, it appears they have the reverse of that, KDE2, and KDE, which refers to KDE3. That gets a bit confusing. If they kept the digit on the the current version, there wouldn't be the problem of what KDE actually refers to, in the various Mdk versions. KDE would always mean KDE1 (or some pre one version), KDE2 would always mean 2, and KDE 3 would always mean 3. They could go as far as always installing them non-conflicting as well, either in different /opt/kdeX dirs (such that the path order would determine which version was run if path wasn't specified, this would be my preferred solution), or in /usr, but with numbers on the individual apps, and non-numbered symlinks pointing to whichever numbered version was considered stable/mainline at the time. -- Duncan "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
