Proposal to improve package configuration upgrades
[ this discussion was started on debian-perl. I'm restarting it on
debian-devel following Gregor Hermann suggestion ]
Hello
The other day, I was upgrading cups and dpkg did ask me the usual way
if I wanted to keep my cups config file or take the upstream version.
Like always, I asked for a diff and was quite puzzled because I did
not remember anything about editing this file. Then I remembered that
I did a modification through cups admin web interface.
Previous common story you might say. But for a casual user (like my
mother-in-law which now use Debian Lenny ;-) ), this can be
frustrating:
- I did modify the config through a nice web interface
- during the upgrade, I either have to look at all the gory details of
the config file or I have to loose my configuration.
So I was thinking that this is a typical case where the upgrade could
be smoothly handled by Config::Model.
Either in automatic mode where user data and upstream modifications
are merged (*) or in manual mode where the graphical (or curses)
interface is fired up so the user can check what's going on.
Of course, there's no miracle. For the merge to work automatically and
the result to be valid, the semantic of the configuration file must be
known by Config::Model. This is done by describing the structure and
constraints of the configuration file in a model (hence the
Config::Model name).
What do you think about this ?
All the best
(*) If you want I can go more in details on how an upgrade can be done
--
Dominique Dumont
"Delivering successful solutions requires giving people what they
need, not what they want." Kurt Bittner
irc:
domidumont at irc.freenode.net
ddumont at irc.debian.org
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