RE: cygport: patches welcome?

["Dave Korn" <dave dot korn at artimi dot com>]

On 13 July 2007 13:45, Corinna Vinschen wrote:

> On Jul 13 12:17, Dave Korn wrote:

>>   I know the idea of automerge is scary.
> 
> Yes, indeed.  Think of complex files like /etc/profile or /etc/csh.cshrc.
> How do you make sure that a merge didn't just work (patch returned
> without error), but that the merge actually had a still working result?
> I think merging is not feasible for all files in /etc.
> 
>>     I guess we should make sure there's
>> a very very easy roll-back mechanism that we can point users at if
>> something goes wrong and that would just restore their prior config
>> exactly as it was before the merge.
> 
> If we really do merges, a merge should always generate a copy of the
> original file and setup should notify the user.  The way Andrew
> described it would still be a good thing, even if an auto-merge went
> fine.

  I think you're right.  I reckon maybe we should only do automerges with the
collaboration of package maintainers, who would need to flag the config files
in their packages that are ok to merge in some way.

  Actually come to think of it I don't think even that would work.  Even the
simplest kind of VAR=VALUE config file could get messed up if the user's mods
involved re-ordering stuff, you'd end up with duplicated values.  Bah.  It's
probably not possible at all to make it really work right.


    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
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