Re: Packaging phpLDAPadmin. Newbie's questions.
On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 01:23:24PM -0600, David Segonds wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 05:37:02PM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > If you mean producing a template file with tags which you macro-replace at
> > configuration time, that's also done, and works well enough if combined with
> > something that ensures that the user's config file doesn't get blotted if
> > they want to fiddle with it themselves - so the md5sum idea above can be
> > used.
>
> In some cases, it should also be possible to parse the configuration
> file using perl, grab all the parameters that the user modified and spit
> them out in your own clean format. A little bit like what 'swat' does.
Unless you include the user's comments as well, at the appropriate time,
this method does not do the job you think it does. Hand-edited files often
need comments for the same reason source code does, and removing those
comments would not be a good move.
This is not quite so much of a problem for the case you describe, SWAT,
because from what I can see it's a pretty complete configuration and
administrative tool for Samba. It's rare that your average debconf script
is equivalent.
> The danger is that if you have a bug, some user configurations may be
> lost in the process.
Always make a backup. <g>
- Matt
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