Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 18:32:54 -0700 From: "Anton Zavrin" <antonzav@pacbell.net> To: "'Doug Barton'" <DougB@FreeBSD.org>, "'Marc Schneiders'" <marc@schneiders.org> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Mergemaster Request (RE: mergemaster tips) Message-ID: <006701c307a5$ee7948b0$0200a8c0@travel> In-Reply-To: <20030420161118.P631@znfgre.tberna.bet>
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Well, I'm a newbie and started to use mergemaster more/less seriously 2
unsuccessful buildworld times ago, actually buildworlds were successful,
it's just after I ran mergemaster and rebooted something went wrong, but
it's all good, I just finished my 3rd buildworld and everything seems to
be working (even after mergemaster), I still feel like there is
something I missed, you know this weird feeling ;-).
Anyways, as for the man pages, my biggest problems were not deep enough
explanations for each switch, may be because I'm a newbie.
What are those: CVS $Id's? Last time I was using mergemaster I got many
files with the same CVS $Id's and they were deleted or something.
Another thing is that (I feel stupid now) when I ran mergemaster for the
first time, I didn't know that when I use "r" or "l" I am given only one
raw from both files to compare and after I picked what side I wanna use,
I hit "q" and "i' to install, instead of just keep going with comparison
of each raw for each file (old/new)
Need a better explanation of such little things like: "!", "---", "+++",
etc.
I think I was wrong about saying that man pages are not good, what I
meant is that would be great to have a help page/FAQ with real life
examples of how to use mergemaster, entire process.
mergemaster is an advanced tool for an advanced users and wasn't meant
for newbies, so I can't argue here.
Also that would be great if there was a utility/script that would do the
following automatically:
1. Copy (not replace) new files that are not installed in the
system yet (mergemaster already has such switch)
2. Go into "conf" (pre-specified list of such files that can be
edited by a user) files to see what new functions/switches are
missing and add (in a commented form)those functions/switches
automatically without replacing old ones. That would save a lot of
time during mergemaster process and after everything is done,
before re-boot, a user can go into those files (pre- specified list)
and quickly uncomment those lines he/she needs/wants to use; this is
a more visual process and easier understandable.
3. Replace old binaries with new
Sorry, if I'm not expressing myself in a more clear way, I'm just sort
of frustrated, but the more I use it, the more I learn (may be in hard
way) the less problems I have. May be someday when I know everything I
will create a step-by-step guide with examples ;-)
Anyway, thank you for your help!!! Every little bit helped a lot!
Best Regards, Anton
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Doug Barton
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2003 4:51 PM
To: Marc Schneiders
Cc: Anton Zavrin; freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Mergemaster Request (RE: mergemaster tips)
On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Marc Schneiders wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, at 15:22 [=GMT-0700], Doug Barton wrote:
>
> > Ok, can you give me an example of something that you don't
understand? I
> > tried to be quite thorough in the man page,
>
> And you are. I just read it for the first time after using mergemaster
> for 3 or 4 years, and I learned a lot.
Well that's good news I suppose. :)
> I thought this was clever, but I now see this isn't good enough. I do
> not want to get an archive, in addition to normal backups, of a
> complete 10 MB /etc directory each time I upgrade.
10 megs!?! Holy code bloat Batman! What the heck do you have in there?
Mine is only 1.3 megs, and that's just because I'm a bit sloppy about
having extra rcNG stuff lying around.
> So here is the feature request: Is it possible to have a new option in
> mergemaster:
>
> -b (path) Make a backup of every file that mergemaster
> overwrites, whether on user input or automatically.
> Mergemaster writes the files in a directory with a
> timestamp name (YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS) under the path
> indicated.
>
> This would give us an archive of the config changes on the machine.
Very interesting idea. Try the attached patch and let me know what you
think. I used -P for "preserve," because I like the semantics better.
This
is all subject to change since I just whipped this up, but it should be
enough for you to play with.
Doug
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