On Wednesday, February 09, 2011 10:12:12 pm Ted Gould wrote: > On Wed, 2011-02-09 at 11:13 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 09:22:16AM -0500, Barry Warsaw wrote: > > > There's one thing I miss from my days running Gentoo, and no, it's not > > > the unholy number of hours it takes to upgrade due to recompiles. :) > > > > > > When a system configuration file gets updated, emerge gives you a > > > richer set of options for dealing with changes. I'm reminded of this > > > with the just upgraded ntp package, which modifies /etc/ntp.conf. > > > > > > Debian/Ubuntu gives you the option to: > > > > > > * Keep your version > > > * Install the new maintainers version > > > * See the diff > > > * Drop into a shell to "deal with" the situation > > > > > > I think these are insufficient. What I really want to do is merge my > > > local changes with the new package version, and I'd like the tool to > > > help me do it. > > > > > > emerge gives me several other options. It's been ages since I ran > > > Gentoo so I don't remember all the details, but one other option was > > > extremely helpful: > > > > > > * Interactively merge local changes with the new version of the config > > > * file > > > > So these days, there are three major paradigms used for configuration > > file management within Debian packages. > > > > - conffiles - this is the built-in dpkg prompt you refer to, with the > > > > incomplete set of choices. Really, this is only a suitable mechanism > > for configuration files that will rarely, *if ever*, need to be > > changed by either the local admin or the package maintainer. > > > > - templates spit out by maintainer scripts - this avoids the annoying > > > > prompts, but also generally doesn't give the admin very much support > > for updating to new package defaults because the maintainer doesn't > > go to the effort of manually merging the changes in. > > > > - ucf. This option *does* store the original version of the file on > > disk > > > > in order to support a three-way merge, which makes it possible to > > offer better options on upgrade. Not quite the same as an > > interactive merge, but an interactive merge option could be added > > here without too much extra work. > > > > This last is the one is the way to go, but it really should be pulled > > into dpkg itself. I don't recall if Sean's patches were based on ucf or > > not. In the meantime, use of ucf requires explicit action by the > > package maintainer, so it's generally only the real problem children > > that get converted over to its use. > > I guess the fourth that I see in use is having a directory of files that > are loaded to build the configuration file. Honestly, this is the one > that I prefer most of the time as it means that the base file always > upgrades. For sure, this doesn't work for all files, but it seems like > if effort is going into configuration files it would be worth converting > all that can to the directory method.
Some packages already do this. See amavisd-new as an example. Scott K -- ubuntu-devel mailing list ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
