two dev branches?

[Patrick Goetz]

On 08/09/2010 08:02 AM, Duncan Gibb wrote:
> I
> think several people are still advocating better upgrade scripts from at
> least trivial and vanilla 2.2.x installations.
>

I don't think even this is a realistic goal and should probably be 
abandoned.  I'm guessing that most people who are upgrading a mail 
server are upgrading the hardware, too.  This means a complete 
re-install is possible so that imapsync can be used to transfer messages 
from the old server to the new one.  Yes, this is probably somewhat time 
consuming (I haven't tried it myself yet), but steps can be taken to 
mitigate the inconvenience to users.  Upgrading a mail server is just 
flat out not a simple task and requires care and planning.  There are 
entire companies (e.g. the people who wrote the "Managing IMAP" O'Reilly 
book) devoted to providing email migration consulting services.

Question:  no matter how elaborate the upgrade script is, would you 
trust an upgrade script to move hundreds of thousands of messages nested 
in an N-deep folder hierarchy from one database version to another? 
Nope, I wouldn't either, and so goes the sys admin world.  When I change 
databases, I export everything to text files and then import into the 
new database; it's not that I don't trust the software, it's just that I 
don't trust the software to move stuff in situ.  Yes, there probably are 
<1% of users would would like to upgrade on the same hardware; it 
doesn't make sense to perpetually delay the release of a secure, 
functional, and up to date cyrus debian package just to accommodate such 
a small user base.  My 2 cents.