I untarred TWiki-4.0.5.tgz and horror of horrors, it had no single root in its directory. Its the first tarball to do this to me in years, and I think its bad form. Better to give instructions on copying the distribution to the right place, than to risk dumping the distro into a directory not meant for it.

-- AndrewKirkpatrick - 02 Jan 2007

Andrew reported this in TWiki:Codev/KnownIssuesOfTWiki04x00x00. I raised this issue for tracking.

There is an unwritten standard that release packages unpack into a root directory, and it makes a lot of sense to anyone used to dealing with multiple installed packages.

The lack of a root directory makes sense if you support the idea of unscripted installs, as each successive package is unzipped over the top of the existing install. This approach works adequately for most experienced admins, but is easy to discredit as it can create support nightmares, especially for beginners. With the existing installer tech (TWiki:Plugins.BuildContrib), there is no excuse for it any more.

CC

can i make this a release blocker? if not, put it back

WN

With the huge bug backlog we have - I'd rather focus on getting those killed. Even the "normal" ones.

Fixing this also involves a lot of doc fixing, and it probably also has a lot of other impact. The BuildContrib needs to be recoded also.

And then there is the communication part with existing customers.

I would prefer such a big change done on a Major release. So having it as a release blocker for 5.0 is fine. But I really think we should focus on getting the real bugs fixed now for 4.2. Especially because we have so many to fix.

KJL

This is an enhancement IMHO. Nothing is broken, it's just not as standard as it could be.

CC

I've fixed this eons ago, but only saw this task because (tm)wiki tried to fix it too.

Was tracked as Item602 and Item1317 to add checksums.

-- OlivierRaginel - 26 May 2010