>>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).
We all know that vpopmail has quite a few configure options and flexible.
When compiling a software, you are the only person who knows the exact
configure options, you are supposed to back up those yourself. Without doing
so, your OS has no way of knowing what configure options you entered the
last time. A newer version of Vpopmail, however, may GUESS the prefix your
previous version installed to, keep in mind, just GUESSING the common
directory path/PREFIX. It's not Vpopmail developers' responsibility to code
the configure script to do way too much of guessing, you somehow are still
responsible to enter the configure options and find out your last install
path.
If you really dislike compiling your own software, just install a
precompiled binary and accept the default configure options. In doing so,
the installer is smart enough to move your data file to data.old and
overwrite the others (binaries, libs..etc). If you run Linux, it has RPM
packaging system which can handle the dirty works for you. In *BSDs, there
is got the precompiled package and the well known *ports* tree. Say
vpopmail, it locates in /usr/ports/mail/vpopmail, there is also a file
called "pkg-plist" which lists the exact files and its paths to be installed
to so you can easily find out the exact install paths of your previous
version.
That said, do backup often or accept the default precompiled binaries.
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