Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 13:16:03 -0600 From: Eric Anderson <anderson@centtech.com> To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> Cc: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> Subject: Re: question on mergemaster Message-ID: <400C2CF3.6080401@centtech.com> In-Reply-To: <p0602047fbc31d1dbad30@[128.113.24.47]> References: <400C012E.4040002@mail.ru> <400C0E5F.5010606@potentialtech.com> <p0602047fbc31d1dbad30@[128.113.24.47]>
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Garance A Drosihn wrote: >> 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 > > > This is probably easier to implement, but there is still a > good chance that someone will make an important change to > some /etc file, and: > 1) not-know to add the line > (documentation? Who reads documentation?) > 2) know, but still forget to do it > 3) remember to do it, but misspell the magic line. > > And at some future system update their change will be automatically > and quietly erased. And depending on the change, they might not > realize that it is gone until weeks or months after having made > the mistake. > > I think it would be a mistake if we streamline mergemaster to > the point that users can easily start losing updates. I think you missed something - "some sort of switch to mergemaster to tell it to go into autoupdate mode" - which I understood it to mean, that the default action will not change, unless you use a "mergemaster -I" or some such beast.. Eric -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Anderson Systems Administrator Centaur Technology All generalizations are false, including this one. ------------------------------------------------------------------
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