On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:45:03PM +0200, Heinrich Rebehn wrote:
Matthew Seaman wrote:
However, I just keep a backup copy of the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm directory handy:
# cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/ # rsync -avx --delete xdm/ xdm.bak/
Cheers,
Matthew
Ok, this would help for xdm. I wonder however, how many other packages are out there with similar behaviour and what other directories i should have a copy of handy.
Or, to put it this way: I would like a port/package system that i can rely on :-)
In practice, this really doesn't bite port/package users very often. The Porter's Handbook states:
If your port requires some configuration files in PREFIX/etc, do not just install them and list them in pkg-plist. That will cause pkg_delete to delete files carefully edited by the user and a new installation to wipe them out.
Instead, install sample files with a suffix (filename.sample will work well) and print out a message pointing out that the user has to copy and edit the file before the software can be made to work.
(http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/dads-config.html)
I filed a pr against XFree86-clients. See what happens...
which perhaps should be generalized to configuration files installed anywhere, rather than just under PREFIX/etc.
Of all the ports I have installed, which is several hundred encorporating general desktop usage, web serving, databases, etc., the only ones I've had problems with regarding trashing my original configuration files are XFree86-4-clients and the Horde, Imp, Turba etc. group of web apps. (These last, to be fair, always preserve my config files as <filename>.previous and updates do tend to involve non-compatible changes to the configuration file contents.)
This is good to hear. Otherwise i would have considered moving to Debian/Linux. :-)
The only other Gotcha! of this type is when a /usr/local/etc/rc.d startup script gets changed to the new rc.subr(8) style. Previously those scripts were generally held to be configurable files and you had to copy the sample file into place, edit it and make sure it was executable before the service would be set up to auto-start on reboot. With the new rc_subr style, the script doesn't need to be edited, but you generally have to add some lines to /etc/rc.conf to enable the service.
Cheers,
Matthew
Cheers,
Heinrich
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