Bug#592462: Solved: dump your old config files

[Dave Witbrodt]

On 08/21/2010 08:06 AM, Christophe Mutricy wrote:
> Le Fri 20 Aug 10 à 20:37 -0400, Dave Witbrodt a écrit :
>> A quick
>>
>>      find -name '*vlc*'
>>
>> in $HOME found a directory called '.config/vlc'.  Moving that out of the
>> way restored video.  All the video formats I have files to test have
>> worked, so everything was actually just fine all along.
>>
>> Scanning for tips about this in
>>
>>      /usr/share/doc/vlc/{changelog,NEWS,README}*
>>
>> revealed no direct statement that configs were incompatible between
>> versions 1.0* and 1.1*.  What baffles me is:  how could they be
>> incompatible, since they moved?  Maybe vlc looks in both places now?
>> Does it get confused if it finds old configs and tries to use them?
>
> The change actually happened between 0.9.x and 1.0.x . But config files
> shouldn't create problem like that. Do you happen to still have the old
> config file ? I'd be interrested by having it ( or a diff -u with the
> new config file)

Heh, I see that a README file was added to ~/.vlc to let us know.  I 
guess it's not hurting anything to have done it that way, but right now 
it kinda looks like a practical joke....

Please find attached two files:  the tar.gz file contains my old ~/.vlc 
directory (useless, but just in case) and my removed ~/.config/vlc 
directory; the diff file is a recursive 'diff -u' between the old 
~/.config/vlc and the new one, created this way:

     diff -r -u /home/dawitbro/.config/bkp-vlc  \
     /home/dawitbro/.config/vlc                 \
     > transform-old-1.0.6-vlc-configs-to-new-1.1.3.diff


>> Can we please have something about this in the vlc man pages and/or
>> /usr/share/doc/vlc?  I have a feeling a lot of Debian vlc users are
>> going to get burned by it.
>
> I'll add a note in the debugging tip presented when you launch
> reportbug.

Thanks for that!  But... dude! ...  I'm begging:  get something in the 
README about this, so that some fraction of the inevitable tsunami of 
bug reports can be prevented.

When craziness like this happens to me, I've learned over the years not 
to immediate file a bug report, but to look around in the man pages, the 
README files, even changelog.*, in case the "problem" isn't really a 
problem at all.  I at least try to only file a bug report once I have 
exhausted my own resources, since I know that the DMs and DDs are 
overloaded as it is.  This is why I never filed my own bug about this 
issue in the couple of months I was having the problem -- I simply 
hadn't gotten around to taking a good, hard look at what was going 
wrong.  Once I took that look, I was able to fix the problem myself in a 
few minutes of work instead of creating more work for the maintainers.

Not that Bruno's bug report was spam, of course.  (You did the right 
thing, Bruno!)  I actually just tripped over this solution by accident, 
trying to exhaust the possibilities before I headed over to the BTS 
myself... which is exactly where I was headed if none of the things I 
tried worked out.  If something had been in /usr/share/doc, or somewhere 
else where I might have found it, I could have upgraded to 1.1.1 when it 
first appeared in unstable.

Anyway, thanks for all of the work that you folks are doing!


Dave W.

PS:  if I botched anything with the attached files, let me know what you 
need.  I'll hold on to them until this bug is closed.
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