Re: Making mutt more friendly towards site customizations
On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 05:34:40PM +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > > Modifying your own /etc/Muttrc so that it sources /etc/Muttrc.local
> > > seems a much better solution to your problem. If the problem is that
> > > you have to do this in a lot of computers, consider using scp.
> > Believe me, I wouldn't be whining about this if it were that simple. My
> > point is that I have _different_ customizations on many computers, so I
> > can't just replicate a single Muttrc to all of them.
> Then replicate a small collection of them.
Which would require only a few orders of magnitude more effort than adding a
single line to the default Muttrc which would solve all my problems at once.
> It seems that you are using testing on many computers. If you use testing
> you should be aware that testing changes every day. If you can't accept
> this use stable instead, which only changes once a year, more or less.
In fact I'm using unstable. The point is not that there are frequent
changes; the point is that needless manual labour is required to accomodate
the changes even though a very simple way exists to avoid this, if only the
maintainer would implement it.
> In either case, multiplying the number of files you have to customize
> will not solve your underlying problem (i.e. that you have to
> administer a lot of computers).
One of my proposed solutions (adding a single 'source /etc/Muttrc.local'
line to the default muttrc) doesn't multiply the number of files I have to
customize.
It just allows me to keep my customizations in a file that won't be
overwritten by the package.
> > > [ In either case, *wishlist* bugs are not to be reopened again and again
> > > once the maintainer has told you he thinks it's not a good idea ].
> > I'm sorry, I must have missed this somewhere. Can you please point me to the
> > relevant documentation?
> The way I read /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-maint-info.txt (from doc-debian),
> only developers should send commands to the bug server.
I skimmed that file now, and found nothing to that effect. (It wouldn't be a
very sensible regulation anyway; the bug reporter might realize that the bug
is nonexistent, in which case they might legitimately close the bug; or they
might reassign it to a different package when they learn more about it;
etc.)
> [ In either case this is not documentation but common practice ].
It's odd to talk about 'common practice' when there is no community to which
this practice would apply. Debian _users_, as a group, do not constitute a
commmunity, at least not to such a degree that they should have 'common
practices' with regard to bug maintenance. Anyway, you probably don't want
to argue about this, and neither do I, so feel free to have the last word.
Why is it that I'm not hearing any professional arguments against the
simpler of my two proposals? Adding a single line to a default config file
can't hurt that much, can it?
Andrew
--
Andrew Korn (Korn Andras) <korn@chardonnay.math.bme.hu>
Finger korn@chardonnay.math.bme.hu for pgp key. QOTD:
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