[Kstars-devel] default stars catalog

[Jason Harris]

Hi,

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 11:24 AM, James Bowlin <bowlin at mindspring.com> wrote:
> In general, it is usually a bad idea to have two different files with
> the same name.  If we do it in this case then if someone re-installs
> the KStars program, it is likely that the Tycho-2 data will get
> overwritten.  If someone has a slow Internet connection then this might
> be a bad thing.
>
Not to worry; the default version will be installed at
$KDEDIR/share/apps/kstars/deepstars.dat, whereas the big version,
installed via the Download Extra Data tool, will live at
$KDEHOME/share/apps/kstars/deepstars.dat.  This directory's raison
d'etre is to store files that override the stuff under $KDEDIR.  KDE
knows to look for files in $KDEHOME first, and $KDEDIR if not found in
$KDEHOME. So there's no need for extra logic, and overwriting the
larger deepstars.dat won't happen if/when kstars is updated.

Jason


> IMO, it would be better to give the two different files two different
> names and add some logic to the program so that it checks for the
> larger of the two files first and only loads the smaller file if the
> larger one is not available.  Given all the data we load at start up,
> the time needed to check for the existence of an extra file will not
> be noticed.  OTOH, overwriting a largish data file will probably
> annoy many people, even those with a fast connection.
>
>
> --
> Peace, James
>