On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> The only possible thing etc-update could ever do is look for trivial
> changes and ignore them. How would you detect the difference between
> non-trivial changes to shipped versions and non-trivial changes made
> locally?
Keep a copy of the config files for installed packages somewhere in /var,
and provide etc-update with "this is the version we shipped that's going
away" on package removal. Currently, it only keeps the hash of the config
file that goes with a package, so it can only tell whether there was a
change in the shipped version, not what that change was. Portage actually
has enough information to detect that the user has modified a
CONFIG_PROTECTed file (moveme and destmd5 != cfgfiledict.get[myrealdest]),
but doesn't test this or communicate it to etc-update.
> You can't say that if the config file exists and hasn't
> changed since installation then overwrite it with the new shipped
> version - that might change the behaviour of an *existing* system
> (without notification) if the user likes the old way and does not like
> the new way.
I didn't say it shouldn't require interaction to get the new shipped
version; I said it should require extra confirmation to discard changes
made locally. It should also be able to offer 3-way merge instead of
2-way, and automatically retain local changes that don't conflict with
shipped changes.
> > It's understood that there is a difference between what I'm using now
> > and what new package comes with. But there's no information on
> > whether that difference came from local modifications.
>
> And neither should there be. Etc-update knows the files are *different*
> and stops right there. Evaluating what that difference means is a
> human's job because it's not a monkey-see, monkey-do process.
What the difference means is up to the humans, but there's no reason,
aside from having carelessly lost information previously, that it doesn't
know where the change came from; that part isn't up to human
interpretation, and it's valuable information for humans trying to
evaluate what the difference means.
-Daniel
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