Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 13:35:07 -0500 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: question on mergemaster Message-ID: <400C235B.1030303@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <400C100F.1090101@centtech.com> References: <400C012E.4040002@mail.ru> <400C0E5F.5010606@potentialtech.com> <400C100F.1090101@centtech.com>
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I'm emailing the current maintainer of mergemaster to co-ordinate with him to see if he'd be interested in patches along these lines if I made them. Eric Anderson wrote: > Bill Moran wrote: > >> rihad wrote: >> >>> Hi. I was wondering if there are any improvements planned to be made to >>> mergemaster? After today's cvsup I had to sit and keep pressing either >>> "q" (to break out of the pager) or "i" to accept the new file. This *is* >>> boring, considering there seemed to be no end to them and I eventually >>> killed mergemaster, because I had started to get nervous and make silly >>> typos :). It's just my toy home machine and there's only few files under >>> /etc that I care about, and these mergemaster doesn't touch anyway (like >>> fstab, rc.conf etc). Wouldn't it be great if one could add the "assume >>> yes" flag so that it overwrites without prompting (like gentoo's >>> etc-update does when you ask it). Currently I came up with this dirty >>> hack to save myself from hundreds of confirmations, it kind of worked: >>> >>> # ( echo d; while :; do echo -e "q\ni"; done ) | mergemaster -i >>> >>> Is such an "no-prompt" option considered important enough to be >>> integrated RSN or am I missing some obvious and convenient usage pattern >>> everyone know about? >>> >>> Thanks in advance and sorry if this is a bit offtopic. >> >> >> >> I'm going to chime in because this has hung over my head for a while. >> >> I've considered writing and submitting a patch to mergemaster to do this >> since the first time I used it. The biggest problem with lookin at >> _every_ file is that it makes the user more prone to error as the tedium >> bores him. Obviously, a switch the simply updates everything is >> pretty much guaranteed to screw somebody! so that's not a good idea >> either. >> >> But I just thought of a potential improvement, and I thought I'd suggest >> this to everyone and see what they think: >> >> If mergemaster checked each file for a magic value, such as: >> # mergemaster autoreplace >> and automatically updated those files without prompting the user, then >> users could add such a line to the beginning of each file in /etc that >> they are comfortable updating without feedback. It may seem like a lot >> of work, but it's only done _once_ (although mergemaster would need to >> be taught to preserve this magic when it updates the file) >> >> The optimistic way to do this would be to have some sort of switch to >> mergemaster to tell it to go into autoupdate mode, and it will only ask >> for files that contain a "negative magic" like: >> # mergemaster noautoreplace >> In which case the administrator should put this string at the beginning >> of every file that he tweaks in /etc > > I like the optimistic approach.. Should some files have this in by > default? Like rc.conf? > How about a few other options, like: > # mergemaster neverreplace > For files that should never be touched (in my case, printcap) -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com
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