[Wine] Why is wineprefixcreate deprecated?

[L. Rahyen]

On Sunday May 25 2008 00:59:12 Bamm wrote:
> It's ironic that the wineboot is suggested to "create" a wine prefix, while
> wineprefixcreate is deprecated because the "update" occurs automatically.
>
> In the past, I've always thought that the practice of using
> wineprefixcreate to "update" (as opposed to create) an already existing
> prefix is a kind of workaround for the absence of a "wineprefixupdate".

	Command "wineprefixcreate" has misleading name. It actually is (and always 
was) wineprefixupdate. In other words, one of primary goal of 
wineprefixcreate was to update WINE prefix. In the reality however (almost) 
no one used it for update of existing WINE prefix (and its confusing name was 
one of the reasons).

> Commands should reflect what they are supposed to do.

	I agree but as you can see name "wineprefixcreate" was much bigger 
confusion - most people didn't understand that it might be (and should be) 
used for updating existing WINE prefixes after each WINE upgrade.

> Telling people that 
> we create wine prefixes by using the wineboot command creates more
> confusion.

	For old users (actually very small percentage of them) who used 
wineprefixcreate it should be quite simple to use wineboot instead. IMO 
wineboot much better describes all its purposes by its name than 
wineprefixcreate.
	It seems to me that you was confused by "wineprefixcreate" too - you think 
that it serves specifically for creating WINE prefixes but it is not its only 
purpose; wineboot as a replacement is very similar: it can serve to create 
WINE prefixes but it is not its only purpose.
	So I see no problem here except maybe we need to update the documentation 
accordingly and just mention wineboot instead of wineprefixcreate.

> we actually need to create a wine prefix, as 
> opposed to updating an existing prefix

	Yes, this is *exactly* what happens if you run wineboot in non-existing WINE 
prefix.
	And BTW, there was never existed a command to just create WINE prefixes. As I 
explained above wineprefixcreate served both purposes, create if not exist 
and update if exist. Now wineboot can do the same: create if not exist and 
update if exist.

	So you have two options now:

	1) Go ahead and just use wineboot instead of wineprefixcreate everywhere - it 
should work (recommended).
	2) Keep using deprecated wineprefixcreate for now (not recommended).