Re: [desktop] Unix configuration nightmare
On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 11:57:58AM +0200, Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder wrote:
> With debconf, there is a tendency to have 'please do not change this file'
> again - see XFree, for instance. Yes, writing lossless configfile parser
> is not trivial, but this would imho be the only way.
This is not by any means the only way. One excellent option is to mimick
the conffile mechanism using debconf, so that the user is only prompted if
they have actually edited the configuration file. If they haven't, then
their existing configuration is overwritten with the updated one. If they
have, then they are prompted about the correct action to take.
This is something like ucf, but using debconf. Don't worry, the config file
hashes would be kept in a separate database, since Debconf Is Not a
Registry.
I sat down and prototyped this once, with nice debconf templates for all of
the questions, so that it could all run during preconfiguration. The
biggest annoyance was that the templates would have to be duplicated in
every package. I am starting to think that this is not so bad, as they
could be installed using a debhelper component and so automatically updated
whenever the package is rebuilt.
Maybe it's time to resume work on that project...
--
- mdz
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