[wpkg-users] Package Renaming [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Leon,

Leon Hedding (ICT) wrote:
> I have seen a number of other solutions that use a GUID as part of the
> package. Is this something that we could somehow include in WPKG? I
> don't know how we would be able to create the GUID to put into the
> packages.xml file, but that would certainly assist with package renames
> which do occur in the real world more often than we would like. Gaim
> goes to Pigdin was one recent occurrence. 

How exactly do you intend to use the GUID? As an identification for the 
package? I also see numerous problems when using the GUID. In fact 
somebody could already use the GUID within the package ID attribute. 
Unfortunately some (lots) of package maintainers seem to change GUIDs 
more often than others change their underwear. For example it seems that 
each Acrobat release uses another ID.

In addition appropriate checks are much more reliable from my point of 
view. If your packages use appropriate checks even renaming should not 
be so much of a problem.

The example of product renaming (Gaim => Pidgin) is not an issue at all 
in my eyes. The first Pidgin package is anyway a fresh installation (I 
even don't know if an "upgrade" from Gaim to Pidgin was possible or if 
they installed in parallel). In any case there is not much difference in 
the upgrade path. In one case Pidgin would be upgraded (full Pidgin 
installer executed) and probably even the old version of Gaim would have 
to be removed manually. In the second case the Gaim package is simply 
deleted and a new Pidgin package is created. WPKG will uninstall Gaim 
and install Pidgin. I don't see a problem here - this is actually the 
way I did it.

br,
Rainer