On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Alan Barrett wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
> > we don't have to edit the file -- we can just re-install the whole file
> > with each package that has an rc.d script.
>
> No!  Please don't do that!
>
> People keep old binary packages lying around, and expect to be able to
> reinstall them later (perhaps to downgrade after a bad experience with
> a newer version of the package).  The old binary package would not know
> about the new variables in the monolithic config file.

Huh? Why would that matter. If an old package rc.d script has no
knowledge of a particular variable, it'll just ignore it. Except for a
few odd corners, you're mostly only going to have a single variable
that matches the name of the script. I'm only talking about a
monolithic "defaults" file -- the user is expected to copy & paste
from there to "rc.conf".

> Other people might want to install binary packages from the NetBSD ftp
> site as well as their own private packages, but the "official" binary
> packages will not know about variables needed by the private packages.

So? You could either source your own defaults file in /etc/rc.conf
(which would be silly), or you could have a section at the end of your
rc.conf with a comment, "Local scripts -- These don't have defaults --
they have to be either "YES", or "NO"".

Frederick