One way these conflicts could be reduced is by separating out sections in config files that will most probably be modified by the user and those which are not. For example the USE directive and the CFLAGS directive from make.conf could be moved to a separate file. That way whenever portage changes, they wouldnt need to update those flags (or even if they did it would be easy to merge). This is in ofcourse be in addition to having a way for the user to indicate which files he is interested in and hence those files should not be auto updated. Also maintaining a history of updates in a separate directory would also help. This way in case things do go wrong we still have access to the old files.
Balaji -----Original Message----- From: Jason Giangrande [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 11:30 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] etc-update Ian, that was my point exactly. I'm not saying that, by default, etc-update should update all files automatically but being able to tell it to update all files that I know I haven't manually changed would be a good thing. Jason Ian Truelsen wrote: >On Thu, 6 Mar 2003 13:53:00 -0500 >"Todd Punderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >>Blindly merging new config files is extremely dangerous. As much of a >>pain as it is, it is of utmost importance that you take the time to >>review the changes and be sure they make sense for your system. You >>surely wouldn't want your make.conf to just be overwritten. Not >>updating or blindly updating the files in /etc is probably one of the >>top reasons for system problems. There is a nice new feature that will >>automatically update insignificant changes to the config files. Check >>out /etc/etc-update.conf. Todd >> >> >> >True enough, but isn't there some way that we could track whether a >config file has been altered? It seems to me that, except in very odd >cases, a config file that has not been altered could just be updated >automatically. > >Of course, I may be biased by having just updated to X 4.3 and had to >cruise through 75 config files in etc-update. I think I wore out the >colon and q keys :) > > > -- -Jason Giangrande giangrande.org - http://www.giangrande.org <http://www.giangrande.org/> Dog's I View - http://www.dogsiview.com <http://www.dogsiview.com/> -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
