At 02:17 PM 2/7/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>In the real world, there is NO SUCH THING as upgrading. It basically
>removes/replaces your old files with the new ones.
I'm afraid I must disagree. If there were no such thing as upgrading, then
when I install a new version of a package (after removing the old, of
course -- unless it is designed so that the two versions do not conflict
with each other) all of the data created/managed/whatever by the old
version would be lost (due to removal) and/or obsolete (due to different
software installed).
Any time the manufacturer of a product (software or hardware) alters the
product to raise its quality (or extend its life) that is an upgrade by
definition (check Webster's if you disagree).
And in fact, it turns out that what I asked for *almost* exists already (in
config.status). And now I'm going to suggest a minor improvement to
configure that will hopefully make its way to people who might implement it:
****************************
It would be great if (a) configure recorded the options used to build a
package in a format it [configure] could reuse and (b) there were a command
line option to tell configure to read those options from a specific file
and/or directory. For example, instead of manually entering all of the
options (and hoping they match what was used for the previous version) we
could enter a command something like this:
./configure --use=../vpopmail-4.9/config.opt
Then, any additional options could add (or replace) options from the old file.
****************************
I doubt that this would be difficult to implement, especially for the kind
of script guru that created configure in the first place. However, it
could be of great benefit quite often.
OK, 'nuf said.
