Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 14:41:02 -0500 From: Dave McCammon <dmac@faq.goivytech.net> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: About mergemaster (Re: upgrading) Message-ID: <20030923194102.GA14365@faq.goivytech.net> In-Reply-To: <3F6FA58A.8020602@mindspring.com> References: <12829.1064235540@thrush.ravenbrook.com> <3F6F0A0C.1060308@rsm.ru> <447k404pr5.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> <200309221814.26301.mupi@mknet.org> <3F6FA58A.8020602@mindspring.com>
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O Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 09:44:42PM -0400, Richard Coleman wrote: > >>far as I can see from the PR database. The mergemaster author didn't > >>especially like the idea, because he thinks people ought to know how > >>their computers are configured. > >> > >>I'll be happy to take a look at your patches when you get it working. > > > >The only problem with this theory is a significant number of the files > >flagged by mergemaster, the only difference is the cvs version tag (in > >theory, this shouldn't be happening, since the cvs tag shouldn't update > >unless something in the file changes, but I have seen this nonetheless. > >Somewhat along the same lines are files where the only changes are changes > >to typos in comments, or adding/deleting comments, which have no > >functional difference on the file itself.). > > I've been thinking about a simple, brute force solution. Just add a new > switch to mergemaster to automatically merge, and then have an > "exception list". > > For instance, say "mergemaster -A" is the command to automatically > merge. It could easily do an automatic merge for all files except for a > given list: > > donotmerge="/etc/rc.conf /etc/hosts /etc/passwd /etc/group" > > If a file in this list has changed, then mergemaster would drop into the > interactive mode like it current does". As I configure a server, I > would just add any file I manually edit to this list. Although not > perfect, it would handle 90% of the cases. I agree with this direction. It allows one to control/view the changes to the configuration of the system while also allowing a method for quick deployment. If there are 50-100 machines to update, the file can be created after one mergemaster and then duplicated to the other machines. Whether the creation of the file is done by mergemaster or done by hand in some pre-ordained format.
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