From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Oct 1 21:09:50 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E876816A42A for ; Sat, 1 Oct 2005 21:09:50 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mwm-keyword-hackers.e471b2@mired.org) Received: from delight.idiom.com (outbound.idiom.com [216.240.47.195]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7DC3443D48 for ; Sat, 1 Oct 2005 21:09:50 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mwm-keyword-hackers.e471b2@mired.org) Received: from idiom.com (idiom.com [216.240.32.1]) by delight.idiom.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A39A225C54 for ; Sat, 1 Oct 2005 14:09:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mired.org (mwm@idiom [216.240.32.1]) by idiom.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with SMTP id j91L9mkl017519 for ; Sat, 1 Oct 2005 14:09:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm-keyword-hackers.e471b2@mired.org) Received: (qmail 67586 invoked by uid 1001); 1 Oct 2005 21:10:24 -0000 Received: by localhost.mired.org (tmda-sendmail, from uid 1001); Sat, 01 Oct 2005 17:10:24 -0400 (EDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <17214.64320.220113.792951@bhuda.mired.org> Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 17:10:24 -0400 To: Bakul Shah In-Reply-To: <200510012034.j91KYWPQ064132@gate.bitblocks.com> References: <20050930150105.GA55158@comp.chem.msu.su> <200510012034.j91KYWPQ064132@gate.bitblocks.com> X-Mailer: VM 7.17 under 21.4 (patch 17) "Jumbo Shrimp" XEmacs Lucid X-Primary-Address: mwm@mired.org X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`; h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.0.3 (Seattle Slew) From: Mike Meyer Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A smarter mergemaster X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2005 21:09:51 -0000 In <200510012034.j91KYWPQ064132@gate.bitblocks.com>, Bakul Shah typed: > Here is an idea for the mergemaster hackers' consideration! > > By keeping /etc files in a source repository one can archive > and document all local changes. This is useful for some of > the same reasons for which we keep sources in a repo: > recovery from mistakes, reuse of old code, checking who did > what, more than one person can make changes, tracking > history, debugging etc. Yup. I've been doing that for about a decade. It also makes a nice tool for disaster recovery. Rather than backing up all the FreeBSD-supplied softare, I back up the repository. After a disk loss, I pull the original install disks, reinstall, then check out the config files from the repository. > If mergemaster handled or worked with a local cvs /etc repo > that'd be very nice! The idea is to make changes and test > them in a temp workspace and commit them *only if they do the > right thing*! I envision a workflow something like this > (using make for illustration purposes): It really ought to provide hooks of some kind for dealing with the repository, rather than having CVS wired into it, as some of us prefer newer tools to CVS. But that's a minor detail. http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.