I worked on uRSSus for a couple of hours again, and it's working pretty nicely.

• Really uses the ORM
• Multiprocessing for a non-blocking UI (python-processing is awesome)
• Adapts to the quirks of some feeds (why on earth would someone do a feed without dates? It's AOL FanHouse!)

I intend to keep working like this for a couple of weeks, and see how far I can get in feature parity to akregator.

No, I don't expect to reach feature parity, I only want to strive for it. SInce I lack the focusand/or energy for a multi year commitment it requires to write the average free software, I want to see how far a sprint gets me.

urssus2 by Roberto Alsina

So far, it's fun.

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Topics: programming, python, urssus

When you upgrade a piece of software on Linux, there are two paths it can go when there are incompatible changes in the config files (ok, 3 paths, Debian asks you what to do):

1. The "rpmnew" way: install the new config file as "whatever.rpmnew", which means the softwarewill break immediately, but that's ok, because you are doing upgrades, so you should be watching already.
2. The "rpmsave" way: replace the old file and save a copy as "whatever.rpmsave".

This has two problems:

1. The software may fail or not, or fail in a subtle way, and you will not notice right away.

2. Maybe the old file will be lost anyway:

   lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 32 jul 15 22:41 /etc/named.conf -> /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf
   lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 32 jul 15 22:36 /etc/named.conf.rpmsave -> /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf
   

In this case the "file" was a symlink, so by "saving a copy" it only saved another symlink to the soon-to-be-overwritten file.

And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, the rpmnew way is the good way.

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Topics: sysadmin