[request-tracker-maintainers] Bug#511260: request-tracker3.8: importing 3.6 configuration and database

[Niko Tyni]

On Sun, Aug 01, 2010 at 03:11:52PM +0100, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:

> I agree in principle, but I think this probably introduces quite a lot
> of risk into the process. Part of the reason for splitting out new major
> releases is to allow people to make graceful, planned migrations between
> versions. This should probably include a full review of configuration
> updates, database scheme changes, etc. I'm concerned that giving people
> the option of a fully automated migration will introduce more problems
> than it'll solve, but maybe that's just being too conservative.

Yeah, I see the concern. Not sure how much better it is to have the lazy
administrator copy the rt-setup-database commands from README.Debian
manually though.

A big warning about copying or at least backing up the database might
help a bit.

Theoretically, upgrading a cheap copy-on-write duplicate of the old
database would make an automatic upgrade much less risky. No idea how
feasible that would be with the current database backends though.

> At the very least I do agree that we should try and detect an existing
> RT 3.6 installation and give some hints for how to proceed.
> 
> Seeding *some* of the debconf variables would probably also make sense
> too (the non-dbconfig ones).

Yes.

Possibly the two sides of this (configuration and database) should be
cloned into separate bugs. The database part may be a bit unrealistic,
but the severity is 'wishlist' after all :)
-- 
Niko