[Fw: Linux Job]

[Jack]

--- Justin Dugger <jldugger at gmail.com> wrote:
> Debian packages occasionally update their config
> files, along with the
> binaries and documentation.  This is typically
> annoying, because the
> changes are most often commented lines.  I've never
> seen a program
> dramatically change its conf file structure to
> warrant keeping the new
> changes, but sometimes they do add new variables and
> default settings
> for them.  Debian gives you the option to view the
> diff in any case,
> and if you aren't certain, its almost always
> advisable to keep the
> current config file.  If I remember correctly,
> apt/dpkg is not
> intelligent enough to merge the two, so your choices
> are typically
> take the new comments or keep your customizations. 

Yeah, this is really annoying. Especially if you are
running a testing/unstable debian like Mepis.
The solution I've come up with is to save the old
config file, let apt-get update the config file and
then extract the lines I want fom the old config and
merge into the new config. I do this only when the new
config has features that need to be included to makke
the updated package work. Making a merge config
function would be an extremely difficult task to
perform. The best solution I can think of would be an
option to merge files based on user input. Like you
could do a diff and then say "merge lines x-y from old
conf into new conf" or "replace lines u-v from new
with lines w-z from old". Which would still be a bit
of a pain.

Brian D.


		
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