Re: RFC: OpenRC as Init System for Debian
On Thu, 10 May 2012, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> In the etc-overrides-lib model, program defaults and local
> configuration are effectively being merged every time the program
> starts.
This is only the case if the configuration files are fine grained
enough that overrides to a configuration file wouldn't also need to
incorporate upstream/packaging changes. In such a case,
etc-overrides-non-etc makes perfect sense, and you wouldn't normally
distribute a configuration file at all (or if you did, it'd just
contain commented, current default values for commonly altered
values).
In cases where the configuration files are not (or co-mingled with
application logic), then etc-overrides-lib is the same as running dpkg
with --force-conf-old and having the configuration files in /etc.
> Maybe users ought to be able to request notification when the
> defaults change. But isn't that true regardless of whether those
> defaults are written in the configuration file format or as part of
> the program itself?
Sure. I personally think it'd be nice to know if the defaults changed
too when I'd altered them. But doing that is difficult when the
defaults aren't already specified in a configuration file. Handling
configuration files as configuration files isn't that difficult.
Don Armstrong
--
Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but
that's not why we do it.
-- Richard Feynman
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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