On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 03:26:05PM +0000, Dominique Dumont wrote: > On Tuesday 08 January 2013 19:39:40 Karl E. Jorgensen wrote: > > > > - If you have modified the configuration, most interfaces will give > > > > > > > > you a diff between your current configuration and ask what to do. I > > > > typically open up a different session and use vim/emacs to merge the > > > > two sets of changes at this point. > > > > > > > > > > > > You mean there will be a bunch of .diff files for you to have to look > > > through? Or something else? > > > > No - it will prompt interactively during installation. There are > > options on apt/dpkg to avoid the prompts by always doing either (a) > > install the new version or (b) leave the config file untouched. > > Which is not very handy for casual users. Which is why I proposed a tool to > migrate user's configuration with new package configuration. [1]
Looks interesting > But I cannot push this further all by myself. Poke the individual Debian maintainers - they're smart people :-) > All the best > > [1] http://wiki.debian.org/PackageConfigUpgrade Yes - unfortunately the formats of configuration files vary (wildly) between different software packages, so I doubt that a one-size-fits-all solution is viable. Perhaps Config::Model should use a plugin-structure for different config file formats? (no: I haven't really thought that one through, just thinking aloud) I've seen other debian packages migrate config files (cannot remember which ones off the top of my head), and in those cases the installation explicitly asked for permission to rewrite the config file [1]. This still leaves the problem with non-trivial upgrades, e.g. where nearly everything has been refactored between versions, and no sensible defaults are possible for (some) configuration variables in the new version. So a 100% automatic migration is probably not possible. 99% may be possible though. It depends. [1] IIRC debian policy mandates that. Also, as a sysadmin I'd hate for things to walk over my config files without my permission. -- Karl E. Jorgensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130123155852.GG8749@hawking
