Bug 62303

Pedro, I think this IS an excellent idea if there are no installer packaging issues. Lets poke the dev and users lists to see if anyone has substantive objections.

Should note though that as it is now, until 4.0.3 RC1 is finalized, the TinderBox daily builds default to install to \LOdev4.0\ and also must have an installer command line value of WRITE_REGISTRY=1 to fully integrate into the Windows Registry.

Andras, assuming no substantive push back is there a good point we can start testing a non-versioned Windows installation directory ahead of RC1? Don't expect we'd have issues with the installer, but we'd need to look at what happens to the non-bundled extensions and behavior of LibreOffice registry during migration.

Setting high importance for this enhancement given target goal of a 4.0.3 build.

You can test it right now, just choose custom install, and install LibreOffice into c:\Program Files\LibreOffice\.

So, there are two versioned paths:

   + user configuration uses major version, e.g "LibreOffice/4"
   + default system installation directory use major+minor version, .e.g "LibreOffice 4.0"

Proposed changes:

   + user configuration path:
          + leave it as is for all 4.x releases
          + later decide to switch to non-versioned patch with 5.0 release

    + system installation path:
          + leave it as is for 4.0.X bugfix releases
          + use only major version for 4.X minor releases => "LibreOffice 4";
             it will be in sync with the user configuration path
          + later decide to use non-versioned path with 5.0 release
 
In each case, I would do this change only on Windows and keep Linux as is. The versioned paths allows to easily install more versions in parallel there. It is not possible on Windows even with the versioned paths because of conflicting registry entries. Note that most Linux users use distro-specific builds that usually use non-versioned installation path. The upstream Linux packages are used there for testing or as a fallback.

Is anyone against this solution, please?

per ESC mtg ( http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/minutes-of-ESC-call-td4043820.html ) install directory to be adjusted to "LibreOffce 4" rather than dropping 4.x numbered versioning completely.

also won't adopt for 4.0.3

adjusting target to 4.1/Master

tinderbox committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=ca7cbe24cc497384d9b4f7d19d1fff3c84e3ea19

use only major version for the system installation path on Windows (fdo#62303)



The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

So, I have done the first step that was approved by ESC. It means to install LO 4.1and further 4.X releases into "LibreOffice 4" system directory. It should solve at least updates between 4.X minor versions.

The question whether to use non-versioned directories for 5.0 is still opened.

(In reply to comment #7)
> So, I have done the first step that was approved by ESC. It means to install
> LO 4.1and further 4.X releases into "LibreOffice 4" system directory. It
> should solve at least updates between 4.X minor versions.
> 
> The question whether to use non-versioned directories for 5.0 is still
> opened.

I think it's one good step forward. 5.0 will be out some 3 to 4 years from now. Hopefully by then a Mozilla style extension checker will have been added ;)