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Date:      Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:51:43 -0800
From:      Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
To:        Garrett Wollman <wollman@bimajority.org>
Cc:        svn-src-head@FreeBSD.org, svn-src-all@FreeBSD.org, Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org>, src-committers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: svn: head/usr.sbin/mergemaster
Message-ID:  <495EB69F.8010203@elischer.org>
In-Reply-To: <18782.40912.247441.716938@hergotha.csail.mit.edu>
References:  <200901011055.n01AtQaN052763@svn.freebsd.org>	<495DB15B.8040908@FreeBSD.org>	<495DB9B6.4030801@FreeBSD.org>	<495DC5AF.3050908@FreeBSD.org>	<495E91F8.3010706@FreeBSD.org>	<18782.37537.775290.682466@hergotha.csail.mit.edu>	<495E9E4B.8030905@FreeBSD.org> <18782.40912.247441.716938@hergotha.csail.mit.edu>

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Garrett Wollman wrote:
> <<On Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:07:55 -0800, Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org> said:
> 
>> Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>> It would be much better if the options that *nearly every user will
>>> want to use* are set correctly by default. 
> 
>> 1. Past experience indicates that your average _developer_ is not very
>> good at estimating what the average _user_ will want as the default.
> 
> Speaking as a user, far more than a developer these days, what
> mergemaster does by default is not what I want.  I have about half a
> dozen FreeBSD systems in various states of "production", and they get
> upgraded about once a year, if that, and always run the security
> branch.
> 
>> 4. I have said literally from day 1 that mergemaster should not ever
>> change a file on a user's system without them taking an affirmative
>> step for it to do so. Whether you agree with that idea or not, it is
>> an expectation that I do not want to mess with.
> 
> Does anyone else have that expectation, or do they think of it as an
> annoying quirk of the program and wish the author would make it be
> more helpful by default?  Is there any evidence that the current
> default behavior is the Right Thing for the typical user?  (Serious
> question.  Maybe it solves some problem that's not the one that I
> have; I haven't done a survey.)
> 


I 'm always pissed off that I have to type 'i' so many times.

I'd like to get a list "I'd like to replace all these.. edit it this 
list and remove any you do not want me to remplace"..

basically I just want to do /etc/passwd  and a few friends, group, 
hosts manually on  my development machines. I want everything else
to be updated... yet after a couple of months if I run mergemaster,
I spend 10 minutes hitting i  i  i  q  i  i  i  i  i  q  i  q  i

(the q is for less or more or whaterver the pager is)

alternatively a "leave the following files alone when in auto mode"
option would do for me.


> -GAWollman




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