From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 15 18:01:28 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 35B6837B401 for ; Sun, 15 Jun 2003 18:01:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sccrmhc11.attbi.com (sccrmhc11.attbi.com [204.127.202.55]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 813FF43F75 for ; Sun, 15 Jun 2003 18:01:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from DougB@freebsd.org) Received: from master.dougb.net (12-234-22-23.client.attbi.com[12.234.22.23](untrusted sender)) by attbi.com (sccrmhc11) with SMTP id <200306160101260110080ea2e>; Mon, 16 Jun 2003 01:01:26 +0000 Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 18:01:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug Barton To: "Michael W . Lucas" In-Reply-To: <20030610192329.A15847@blackhelicopters.org> Message-ID: <20030615173721.Q32802@znfgre.qbhto.arg> References: <20030610124747.A7560@phantom.cris.net> <20030610192329.A15847@blackhelicopters.org> Organization: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ X-message-flag: Outlook -- Not just for spreading viruses anymore! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: arch@FreeBSD.org cc: Alexey Zelkin Subject: Re: removing stale files (was: Re: cvs commit: src/etc Makefile locale.alias locale.deprecated nls.alias) X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 01:01:28 -0000 On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, Michael W . Lucas wrote: > [cc trimmed] > > On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 12:47:47PM +0300, Alexey Zelkin wrote: > > But I think there're already someone who > > has it implemented. Otherwise I'll spend some time, write and commit > > it. > > NetBSD's etcupdate has this functionality, and a bunch of other stuff. > > Of course, etcupdate started life as our mergemaster... That's not strictly correct. I had a chat with luke about this recently. He has somewhat different goals in mind than I do. etcupdate does things differently than mergemaster does it, and there is also another program called /etc/postinstall that does a few other things differently, but related. The main difference between his approach and mine is that his stuff has specific, and sometimes detailed knowledge about individual files. I purposely avoided that approach, which makes mergemaster a lot more flexible, at the cost of not necessarily making the _files_ all the same when you're done. What I wanted to do instead was to make the _configuration_ the same (i.e., updated to the latest stuff), while potentially leaving some crufty files behind that should probably be deleted by hand at some point. There are pluses and minuses to both approaches. My method allows the users more flexibility in customizing their stuff, at the cost of requiring them to do more maintenance by hand to keep things clean. Since stale files in /etc usually don't cause much if any harm, I felt like this was the better approach. Doug -- This .signature sanitized for your protection