Uploads to lenny and the $KDEHOME dilemma

[Armin Berres]

Hi all!

As you all know Lenny is near, which also means that our 4.2 packages will 
enter Unstable in the very near future. Until today, we still have not decided 
how to handle KDEHOME.
The current situation is, that KDE 3 applications use ~/.kde and KDE 4 
applications use ~/.kde4. The problem with this approach is, that no 
data/settings are automatically converted to be used by KDE 4.

The question is now: should we
a) continue to use ~/.kde4 for KDE 4 applications
b) use ~/.kde for KDE 4 applications.

The problem with a) is, that as mentioned no data is is moved to KDE 4. The 
problem with b) is, that we don't know for sure, if all upgrade scripts work 
and users don't loose critical data. Apart from that users already using KDE 4 
won't find their settings copied.
(Add here more pros and cons for either option.)

To overcome this, we had the following idea in IRC: Provide a little Qt 
application which starts at the first KDE 4 start and allows the users to copy 
their KDEHOMEs around.
In case we would use ~/.kde for KDE 4 the script could offer to create a backup 
in ~/.kde3 so lost data can be reverted if anything goes wrong.
If we continue to use ~/.kde4 the application could offer to copy ~/.kde to 
~/.kde4.
Non-KDE users are a bit lost here, we could document what to copy where.

So, which options do you see? What would you prefer?
Don't forget that we have to decide/code all this before we upload kde4libs to 
unstable.

Greetings,
Armin