On Wednesday 01 June 2011 19:53:32 David W Noon wrote: > On Wed, 01 Jun 2011 20:20:02 +0200, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote about > > Re: [gentoo-user] Cleaning redundant configuration files: > >On Wednesday 01 June 2011 15:57:58 David W Noon wrote: > [snip] > > >> I called it an "annoyance". Having to clean up obsolete > >> configuration files is just that, unless you can offer a better term. > > > >so - what happens when you uninstall a package to cleanly install it > >again? > > > >Happens from time to time - and I seriously would not want to see the > >carefully personalized config file be moved to the big blue electron > >pool in heaven. > > That's easy: if you know you are going to reinstall after deleting, > just take a backup copy of those files you have modified, which is > usually only the one configuration file. After the reinstallation, > restore from your backup. > > Alternatively, you can switch the suggested option to "off", either on > the command line or in /etc/make.conf. > > This is a fairly rare occurrence, and it should be planned -- including > the making of a backup.
no, usually something like this happens at 2:30 am without planning because the last -uD world fucked everything up and you have tried all other options in the last hours. And losing your pure-ftpd user database because of a mistype in portage options is a complete nightmare. There is a simple rule in computing: NEVER remove user created data that also applies to config files. There are ways to check if a file is still needed by something in your system. But portage has no business touching something that is not in the same state as it was when it was installed.
