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Date:      Thu, 2 Nov 2000 17:17:10 -0600 (CST)
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
To:        Archit P Shah <ashah@MIT.EDU>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: system files and version control
Message-ID:  <14849.62966.135429.2396@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <127732836@toto.iv>

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Archit P Shah <ashah@MIT.EDU> types:
> 1) Are there good reasons to not put system files (/etc/passwd, /etc/group,...)
> under version control? It seems like it would be useful to be able to see the 
> changes over time. (Not as a security measure, but as a way of doing sanity
>  checks).

I certainly hope not - I keep a lot of them under version control!
/etc/password wasn't one of them, because it tends to be edited by
tools, not users. But lots of others (/etc/*.conf, /etc/fstab, kernel
config files, qmail control files, and so on) are there, and it makes
a *lot* of sense to do that.

> 2) If there are no good reasons to avoid putting system files user version
> control, does it make sense to build that into the distribution? (as an
> option)

It already is, and not as an option. RCS is part of the base system,
though it doesn't look like much work is being done to maintain it
(the GNU version is used pretty much as is). There are a number of
tools for working with (and installing) cvs in ports/net and
ports/devel. I use Perforce instead of CVS, and that can be installed
from the ports as well.

	<mike


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