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 -- This .signature sanitized for your protection
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