On Sunday, March 30, 2014, Uwe Stöhr <[email protected]> wrote: > Am 29.03.2014 10:48, schrieb Vincent van Ravesteijn: > > This sounds like nonsense that installing 2.0.7 over 2.0.6 is ok, but >> installing over 2.0.7 suddenly >> leads to problems. >> > > Well, when you need to install LyX 2.0.7 over LyX 2.0.7 you apparently > have a problem with LyX - otherwise you would not need to do that, right? > In the past when this was allowed problems weren't resolved bot sometimes > only the registry was mangled even more, but see also below. > > I don't like the style of your answers. You explain me what the registry >> is and how I can clean it >> up. Do you think I don't know this myself and do you think that this is >> slightly relevant to the >> issue ? >> > > I don't understand. You asked me if a PC can get in a state there LyX > cannot be installed anymore. I answered what can be done in any case. So > what is wrong when I answer to your questions as I understood the question? > I even asked you if everything in your mail was meant for real or ironic > because I was unsure.
Well, the clue was in the last sentence. I asked: "do I have to be a computer expert to install LyX again ?" Apparently, yes. I can't believe you don't want to ask the "average" LyX user to copy his preferences, because he probably doesn't understand what a preference is. At the same time, you tell him to download some untrustworthy tool to mangle with his registry to be able to install LYX, just because some vague potential problems. > > However, the problem you encountered is due to the beta builds I guess. > The installer for the betas were not adopted specially so that I could not > provide the feature that installing beta 2 over beta 1 etc. is possible. > This is mainly because I simply don't have the time to maintain also beta > releases but also because betas can contain bugs (e.g. in configure.py > leading to perhaps broken preferences). So assuring that installing over > each other will always lead to a case where one does not see bugs of the > previous beta cannot be guaranteed (and checking that would cost me a lot > of time I don't have). First of all, what makes you think I encountered a problem ? I didn't say so. Secondly, this "installing over beta does not fix bugs"-mantra is not based on any fact thus far. > > In the meantime you say twice that there might be problems and there are >> reasons to disallow LyX to >> install over the first version. Please tell me then what these problems >> are. >> > > I cannot remember the precise reasons because it is too long ago (was > added when I dropped the "update installer" that I once provided I think). > I remember a discussion about this with Joost and user complaints. > But the main reason is what I wrote above: If a user thinks that it is > necessary to install the same stable release over itself, he has a problem > with the release. We cannot know what problem he might have: > Many error reports I got showed that the user registry was mangled (for > example HKCR was not in sync with HKLM so that e.g. *.lyx files were not > opened with LyX but with notepad (Windows default backup for text files). > In these cases only a re-installation will help (you might have noticed > that the uninstaller handles some registry settings that are not directly > added by LyX but by Windows automatically). This way you get a clean > registry and issues like my example are solved afterwards. > Other error reports have something to do how third-party programs were > found. By installing over itself you will still suffer from e.g. invalid > paths in PATH_prefix in the preferences. Also in these cases only a > re-installation (where you also delete the preferences) will help. So, what would be wrong with a message "LyX is already installed. If you want to repair LyX please uninstall first. Continue anyway?" Or "LyX is already installed. Do you want to repair (all settings will be lost) the installation or continue?" > So despite that I cannot remember the special use case and technical > reason that once lead to the feature not to allow to install stable > releases over each other, I think it is very clever. It might sound > inconvenient but in many cases the re-installation fixes the problem that > lead a user to the action to try to install over the same stable release. Wow it's so clever .... You do not even read what I write about people that might not be able to uninstall LyX, because they thought deleting the LyX directory would help in getting a fresh install. > > (Note that installing over other minor releases is and was always allowed.) > > Here you're telling plain lies. I had to fight with you to allow installing over other minor releases. First everyone had to uninstall the previous version. And the default for uninstalling was to delete all preferences. Telling lies is what upsets people. > regards Uwe >
