Bill Bogstad wrote: > On Wed, Aug 28, 2024 at 12:43 PM Daniel Barrett > <dbarr...@blazemonger.com> wrote: > > > I do something similar but slightly more automated. I use git to > > capture every change I make to system files. Basically, I initialize a > > git repository in (say) ~/SystemChanges and create a duplicate, sparse > > directory structure containing all the changed files. So if I update > > /etc/apache2/foo.config, I copy it to ~/SystemChanges/etc/apache2/foo.config > > and "git commit." When it comes time to migrate to a new machine, I can > > recreate all needed changes to system files within a few hours. I also reap > > the benefits of versioned changes to individual system files. > > > > The only tricky bit is preserving file owners & permissions, but they > > are present in the original files. > [late to the party] > > It sounds like you are doing something like the etckeeper system: > > https://etckeeper.branchable.com/ > > It handles things like file permissions pretty well. One downside is > that as far as I know it only handles files in /etc. > It would be nice to use it more generically to manage configuration > files on other directories.
To bring it right back around to Daniel's point: that's what git is for. etckeeper is a wrapper around git that hooks into the packaging system to auto-commit when the packaging system makes changes, but if you want that functionality without the packaging system hooks, that's git with a local secondary repo. -dsr- _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.blu.org https://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
