What we need is a way to mark some package files as customizeable files, or configuration files. The same way that some files are marked DOC, but a bit better: it would need to be carried to the installed package database.
This is again re-inventing the wheel since it is exactly how Debian's apt-get system deals with configuration files. /etc files are part of a package that, when upgraded, are checked for modification and the user is offered the choice similar to mergemaster to install, merge, or just delete. We still need to write a generic tool to diff and merge. It's not so hard to write. It would basically be a stripped down version of mergemaster -s. I think such a tool would be really useful. A. On Thu Mar 20, 2003 at 10:15:48PM -0600, Brandon D. Valentine wrote: > I have encountered a situation in which it would be extremely handy to > have a generalized version of mergemaster(8) which is less specific to > the task of merging /etc. I need to recursively merge two directories > of source files in which I wish to preserve some original files, install > some replacement files outright, and only actually go to the trouble of > sdiff(1)ing those files that from the preview udiff look like they are > need of a merge. Has anyone already done the work of generalizing > mergemaster to this more general task? And if not, is there interest in > this? If nobody has done it I'm probably about to. My inclination is > to extend the existing mergemaster script to support this general > functionality while maintaining support for the specific case of an /etc > merge. mergemaster(8) is already fairly applicable to this task but it > currently makes some assumptions about what your $Id$ looks like and > that you will in fact be running make(1) somewhere to generate your > temproot. > > Thoughts? > > Brandon D. Valentine > -- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.geekpunk.net > Pseudo-Random Googlism: valentine is her husband > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > -- Advertisers, not governments, are the primary censors of media content in the United States today. - C. Edwin Baker http://www.ad-mad.co.uk/quotes/freespeech.htm
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