Bug#275951: Please split kdmrc into multiple files for ease of maintenance

[Josh Metzler <joshdeb@metzlers.org>]

On Monday 11 October 2004 04:14 am, Andras Korn wrote:
> Package: kdm
> Version: 4:3.3.0a-1
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Hi,
>
> Currently, upgrading kdm is a mess if kdmrc has been edited by hand. Even
> the diff output is barely usable because there are many comments in the
> file that often also change across versions.
>
> It'd be nice if kdmrc could be split into several small files, each of
> which would contain related settings and (almost) no comments. The
> comments, being very verbose, belong in /usr/share/doc/kdm/examples/.

I think this in itself would be a solution to this bug.  The main problem I 
see is that the kdm kcontrol module completely rearranges the options from 
the default config, and it strips all comments.  Because of this, the new 
upstream version is completely different from the version on the harddrive 
even if you have only made a small change.

So, I think a solution would be to 1) put the current default config, with 
all examples in /usr/share/doc/kdm/examples/ and 2) open the current 
default config in the kdm kcontrol module and save it (thus getting the 
options in the order the kcontrol module writes them out and stripping all 
comments) before shipping it.

If this were done, only those lines that the user actually changed would 
show up in the diff.

Josh