Subject: fvwm2 versus fvwm

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 16:38:00 +0300 (IDT)

Now, when there is a stable fvwm version 2, are there enough reasons to
leave '2' in the executable and configuration names? Since the project
name is fvwm, having '2' in bin/fvwm2 and fvwm2rc is a bit confusing.

I think, installing, say, fvwm-1.24 and fvwm-2.4 on the same system is
not much different from installing fvwm-2.2 and fvwm-2.4. In both cases
the names of the executable and configuration files can be the same and it
is the responsibility of a system administrator to organize both
versions to avoid name collision.

The fact that the executable is fvwm2 leads some distributions, say, RedHat,
to refer everywhere to this project as "fvwm2", while referring as "fvwm"
to the old unsupported project. Some distributions like Debian and SuSe are
on the right way, they call the packages fvwm1 and fvwm (still there are
references to this project as "fvwm2" in many places.) This process must be
completed by renaming executables from fvwm & fvwm2 to fvwm1 & fvwm.

As an example, /usr/bin/X11/wmconfig gets as argument fvwm2 and produces a
part of the fvwm2rc. My own wm-icons/create-wm-config gets as argument fvwm2
and produces fvwm2rc-wm-icons. I think '2' must be stripped everywhere.

The only difficulty for fvwm can be renaming .fvwm2rc back to .fvwmrc, but
there are several solutions. For example, fvwm can decide to rename found
.fvwm2rc to .fvwmrc (if there is not already a .fvwmrc). Also, it is a good
idea to put a magic cookie at the first line of the .fvwmrc, like:

# fvwm 2.4

This will not only help to distinguish between the old .fvwmrc v1 and a
.fvwmrc v2, but also will allow adding a new syntax while supporting old
syntaxes in the future. fvwmrc_convert can be used to always keep .fvwmrc
up to date.

Just my thoughts.

Regards,
Mikhael.

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