[mythtv] Re: handling database structural changes (Isaac Richards)

[Dr. J. S. Pezaris]

   From: Isaac Richards <ijr at po.cwru.edu>
   Subject: Re: [mythtv] handling database structural changes
   
   Not at this point in time, no.  When the database has stabilized more, yes.  I 
   just don't want to have lots of crufty upgrade code in there at the moment.
   
I don't see why it wouldn't hurt to have stubs in place that would at least
detect a change in database format and provide a warning to the user.  It
would seem that the times of highest database flux are when that kind of
feature is most useful, even specifically without the conversion routines.
Then, once the database format has stabilized, appropriate conversion
routines can be implemented.  But even for those who do daily CVS
downloads, I'd imagine it would be nice to know that the database format
has been changed.

For example, one might imagine a two-tier mechanism.  The system would work
as Kirby Vandivort suggested (the volunteer above), providing automatic
conversion between database formats for major releases (as a speculative
aside: there are probably enough 0.8 users that database conversion once
0.9 is released will become an issue).  For current CVS, conversion
routines would be lacking since it wouldn't make sense to include, in
Isaac's words, lots of crufty upgrade code for each minor database change,
so the system would only issue a warning that a newer format was expected.

It's not clear why this isn't a desirable feature which should be included
now, given that there's someone willing to write it.  Not that I have a say
in the matter really, but I'd encourage Kirby to have at it!

	- pz.

-- 
John Pezaris, Ph.D.
pz at hms.harvard.edu