>> On 18 Apr 2003 03:23:44 -0400,
>> Colin Walters <walters@debian.org> said:
> On Fri, 2003-04-18 at 00:08, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:
>> Of course I can understand that it is possible to destroy local
>> changes as I wrote in a former email.
> Ok, well, policy is quite clear this isn't allowed.
I tend to agree. I evben filed a grave bug about it, which was
promptly closed, and at that time I did not have the time to get into
a prolonged debate.
>> Though I didn't check this yet but if I (or some other tetex
>> members) can understand it and find it useful for us then tetex
>> packages will adopt it but if not (and if the current handling
>> really breaks Policy), is it the only way to get back to the
>> former scheme?
> Well, it seems you're really not convinced Policy is being violated
> here. That's understandable I guess. I am hoping other people
> here will weigh in with their opinion.
> Any policy editors?
I don't know if policy editors carry any special weight here,
but I think this is indeed a violation of policy, and worse, of an
expectation that we have encouraged users to have that their changes
to files under /etc shall not be blown away.
>> I have an impression that such Policy understanding prevents sane
>> advance of packages.
I am sorry, I do think that not preserving user changes is not
an advancement.
> Well, the solution might be to change policy. In the interim, I
> think my fontconfig approach is fairly good (although it certainly
> could be improved). That's why this thread is being CC'd to
> -devel, so we can come to a consensus about this issue.
> Having some packages prompt for "manage with debconf" all in
> different ways and with different warnings in the config files and
> different defaults is most definitely a bad thing.
My as yet incomplete mechanism is to use debconf andother
means to generate a current configuration file on the fly, and use
ucf to prompt, somewhat like dpkg, as below:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Configuration file \`$dest_file'
==> File on system created by you or by a script.
==> File also in package provided by package maintainer.
What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
Y or I : install the package maintainer's version
N or O : keep your currently-installed version
D : show the differences between the versions
3 or T : show a thre way difference between current, older,
and new versions of the file
M : Do a 3 way merge between current, older,
and new versions of the file [Very Experimental]
Z : start a new shell to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note the options to merge maintainer changes into the locally
modified configuration file. Use 3 or T to view the merged file, and
use M to ask the maintainer changes to be merged in.
I am attaching the man page of ucf as a shameless plug.
manoj
Attachment:
ucf.1
Description: ucf.1
-- "In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current." Thomas Jefferson Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/> 1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C