Johnny Billquist <bqt%update.uu.se@localhost> writes: > Just to once more point this out - etcupdate is not too aggressive. It > never overwrites anything, unless explicitly instructed to do so. > etcupdate is very interactive. It is not a batch tool. Any changes > suggested needs to be approved by the person running etcupdate. > > In my view, etcupdate is the best tool I've encountered for the > job. However, it does require you to actually read, understand, and > act upon a lot of information. It is not a good tool for someone who > don't know what's in /etc, and it is not a good tool for the > impatient. But it will actually allow you to merge your local changes > with the changes introduced in the system distribution, in the way > that you actually want the end result to be, and skip parts that you > don't agree with. For a clueful person updating one machine, I think your view has a lot of merit. But for someone who is updating 50 machines, interactive leads to annoyance which leads to overwriting files unintentionally. And I thinks omeone who desn't know the gory details will also make unintentional changes. My 'too aggressive' comment should have been about the combination of etcupdate and real users. I think that there really needs to be a default workflow that is not interactive and has reasonable results. I think that requires storing the previous pure etc.tgz contents to allow three-way merging, but that's a small price to pay for reduced thinking. (My current approach is to run etcmanage and then look at diffs.)
Attachment:
pgp5OVZL72hp8.pgp
Description: PGP signature