From owner-freebsd-stable Sun Oct 25 19:30:29 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id TAA18715 for freebsd-stable-outgoing; Sun, 25 Oct 1998 19:30:29 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from scn4.scn.org (scn4.scn.org [209.63.95.149]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA18709 for ; Sun, 25 Oct 1998 19:30:28 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from bc587@scn.org) Received: from scn.org (bc587@scn [209.63.95.146]) by scn4.scn.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id TAA11144 for ; Sun, 25 Oct 1998 19:33:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (bc587@localhost) by scn.org (8.7.5/8.6.12) with SMTP id TAA24174 for ; Sun, 25 Oct 1998 19:37:26 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 19:37:26 -0800 (PST) From: Allan Bowhill X-Sender: bc587@scn To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Using SGML to merge /etc Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello everyone, Has anyone given thought to using SGML to update /etc during make world? In principle, it would be well-suited for resolving differences at a high granularity, based on marked content rather than character-level differences. For instance, diff would notice most differing characters in comment fields in rc.conf. When comparing old to new, the merge person is forced to resolve these at the same level as important differences, like the addition of a new configuration option. With the right markup, importance could be attached to fragments of a config file, so the person merging would not have to be concerned with inconsequential changes. Development in this area might make things more automatic. Any thoughts, or has this been discussed already? ------------- Allan Bowhill bc587@scn.org ------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message