Re: Implications of changing an app's bundle identifier
Re: Implications of changing an app's bundle identifier
- Subject: Re: Implications of changing an app's bundle identifier
- From: Bill Cheeseman <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 06:28:34 -0500
- Thread-topic: Implications of changing an app's bundle identifier
on 2007-02-25 1:59 AM, Daniel Jalkut at email@hidden wrote:
> On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:16 PM, Darkshadow wrote:
>
>> I don't know about leaving files around after this, though. I've
>> always felt like that's bad housekeeping on my part, to leave
>> unused files around on the user's system. Doing what you suggest,
>> but deleting the old files, would work. If they felt the need to
>> run an old version, they'd have to reset the preferences for it,
>> but then those wouldn't overwrite the new ones if they reused the
>> new version. They also wouldn't be deleted, then, but in that case
>> it'd be more on the user for having done that.
>
> I agree it's bad housekeeping. But when we're not able to read the
> mind of the user, it's probably better to be a little bit sloppy. The
> size of the prefs file is probably negligible. I mean really, half
> the applications I ever even thought about running have left a prefs
> file in my disk :) I don't think it's so bad to leave a little prefs
> turd in the unusual circumstance of an identifier migration.
Ack, I hadn't even thought of the downgrade issue. I'm glad I posted this
question!
My products are released as 30-day free trials. When there's a paid upgrade,
it is very likely that some users will try out the new version for a few
days, decide not to pay for it, then go back to using the old version, which
they already own.
So, thinking out loud here, I guess I'll just leave the old preferences in
place forever. I'll put a note in the documentation, so careful readers who
worry about this sort of thing (there are some people who do worry about it,
and they tend to be careful readers) will be able to manually delete the old
preferences. (I could delete the old preferences when the user enters the
upgrade key, but I'm thinking that it would be better to be entirely
consistent on this, since the identifier change isn't going to coincide
exactly with an upgrade fee.)
In the pre-bundle identifier days, I often saw old preferences files left in
place as new preference files were created for new versions. Now that I
check it out, I see this happening even from major commercial publishers
with new product bundle identifiers. Why, here's one now:
com.omnigroup.OmniWeb.plist
com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5.plist
And another:
com.adobe.Reader.plist
com.adobe.Reader6.0.plist
com.adobe.Reader7.0.plist
com.adobe.Reader_ppc_8.0.plist
Bill Cheeseman
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