[Qt-interest] [OT] Politically Correct way to release an Open Source Qt Project

[Kustaa Nyholm]

.
>> As to uninstalling, that too could / should be included in the application
>> IMO.
>deleting itself?

What I meant was that the application should have a command to delete everything
else except itself, if you feel that a dangling config/preferences file is an issue.
 Like I said, most user don't care if an odd config file or such
dangles in the system, what is a one more file that you don't understand about
among the hundreds of thousands of Windows files and megabytes?

As to the application .exe file, the user can just trash it. 

>what about damaged config files? Ok, you may include some functionality to
>repair or recreate damaged config files in your application. 

Indeed. The application should detect damager files, and offer to correct them,
instead of expecting the user to figure out that a damaged config file is
preventing the application from running and expect the user to a) have the
installer handy and b) to understand that re-running the installation fixes
the problem, like many application expect the user to do.


>But maybe you
>have to grant special user rights to do this (to prevent ordianry users to
>kill/recreate important settings)

In the first place most data should be stored in a place where the user
has access rights and in the second place temporarily raising the user
access rights by asking for the admin password is a good way handle
this sort of issues and the OS should support this concept.

Also I feel that it is condescending to say categorize people as 'ordinary'
user that have no right to their own data. We, as programmers, should
empower our user to do what they want. If they want to delete preferences
it is just our duty to warn about the impending action and then let
them do it if they so choose.


>for not perfect operationg systems (like Windows oder Linux) there are
>guidelines for these locations...

Sarcasm aside, there are guide lines for all serious operating systems
including OS X:

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/qa/qa2001/qa1170.html



>what does a MAC user if a program doesn't start anymore - beause of damaged
>config or cache files? Format the whole system disk? Or wait until the
>garbage cleaning will delete cache files?
>On Linux the user may be able to start the program with a special cleaning
>option. On Windows the installer has a repair option...

Come on,  if the application is so lousy that it does not detect a damaged preference file,
then of course the user is doomed to google for instructions on what files
to delete manually. But really, as a programmers we should be able do better than
rely on an installer to repair our faulty coding schemes. An application should
never refuse to start up if a file is missing or damaged, at very least it should
start in a limb mode that offers to delete / re-create the damaged files.

br Kusti