On 10/1/18 2:46 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote: > On 1/10/2018 2:05 p.m., Richard Kimberly Heck wrote: >> We use 'versioned' user directories on OSX and Windows: By default, the >> major version number is used as part of the directory name. This leads, >> on Windows, to hassles for users: When you upgrade from 2.2 to 2.3, you >> have to manually copy the old user directory to the new location if you >> want to preserve your preferences, etc. >> >> I've more or less got a patch for configure.py that mimics what already >> happens on OSX on Windows, but now I've started to wonder about it. The >> logic behind the patch is this. >> >> (1) When we configure, we first make sure we are in the 'default' user >> directory, by checking the pathname. If not, we do nothing special. >> >> (2) Next, we look for lyxrc.defaults. If it's there, we rightly figure >> it's not a new directory that we're creating but we're just >> reconfiguring, and so we do nothing special. >> >> (3) Next, we look for previous user directories LyX2.2, LyX2.1, etc. If >> one is found, we copy its contents into the current directory >> >> But what if the user has purposely deleted their user directory so as to >> get a fresh one? Then, when they restart, if we find an old one, we copy >> its contents again. But what if there was some problem with the old >> preferences? Something seems wrong about this to me. > I have had this problem. Rather than deleting the directory I rename > it. LyX then creates a new one to which I can copy contents across > item by item from the renamed directory, since there is usually only > one thing causing the problem, testing LyX as I go until the offending > item shows up.
Thanks for the example. >> I wonder if, all things considered, a better option would be to stop >> using versioned user directories on Windows, at least. Then no special >> copying is needed, etc. If we did this for 2.4, then we could tell >> people *as usual* that they needed to copy over their old preferences, >> but that would be the last time. >> >> I take it that the reason to have versioned user directories is so >> people can have parallel installations of 2.2 and 2.3, say. But you can >> still do that, of course, by manually setting the user directory. How >> many people do that anyway on Windows? > I have 2.2 and 2.3 installed in parallel like this but I don't know > how to manually set the user directory. I just uninstalled & > reinstalled LyX to see if I had overlooked an option to do this during > the installation process but no, and there's nothing obvious to me > under Tools > Preferences > Paths. If manual naming of the user > directory is available then your suggestion makes sense. The change has to be made in the launcher (icon, menu item, whatever) you use to start LyX. There's an argument "-userdir" that sets the user directory. So in the launcher for 2.2, you might have the command as: c:\Users\andrew\AppData\LyX2.2\bin\lyx.exe -userdir c:\Users\andrew\AppData\Roaming\LyX2.2\ Of course, this issue would only really arise with LyX 2.5 (!), since current and past versions default to a versioned directory. Riki
