[mythtv] Schema updates

Allan Stirling Dibblahmythml0015 at pendor.org
Sat Mar 3 09:37:04 UTC 2007


f-myth-users at media.mit.edu wrote:
>     > Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2007 03:28:41 -0500
>     > From: "Michael T. Dean" <mtdean at thirdcontact.com>
> 
>     > Personally, though, I don't care either way--it won't affect me because 
>     > I do and will understand the issues and the proper procedure for 
>     > upgrading (not to mention the three pieces of info I discussed above).
> 
> You're -so- not the "target market" it isn't even funny.
> 
> In fact, your response is one of the most frustrating things about
> trying to say -anything- about usability when it comes to Myth:  it's
> pretty much guaranteed that some developer/expert user will say, "Hey,
> -I- can do it, so it must not be a problem."  By definition, most
> users are -not- at that end of the bell curve---and hence will make
> mistakes (and generate a lot of list traffic) even if it was
> theoretically possible for them to have done the right thing.
...

And adding _another_ manual step doesn't improve matters for
anyone.

The 'target market' as you put it just wants it to work.
Which it invariably _does_ if they follow the various
instructions. Making those instructions even longer is _not_
a good way to go.

The best way I can see to resolve this particular wrinkle is
a mythbackup script or similar, that's either run regularly
or at least on schema updates. This makes stepback easier.

I believe most of the devs (please correct me if I'm wrong)
understand that there are _way_ too many options and 'things
that need done' to get a good working install. It's just
that noone has figured out a good way to remove the
complexity without removing the functionality.

Again, as usual, patches will get a lot more attention than
discussion. However, please remember that the devs have
personal lives that do not (all ;) revolve around myth. Have
a look in trac and see how many outstanding issues there are
currently. That's a good indication that everyone has
already enough "itches to scratch" at the moment. Expecting
patches from (sorry to be brutal) a beginning contributor to
be committed within a few weeks / months at the moment is
unrealistic.

Please, keep up with your patches, however. When a dev does
get time to look at it, it's a lot more likely to be
committed or at least commented upon if it applies cleanly
to current SVN.

Cheers,

Allan.


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