Re: [gentoo-dev] /etc/init.d

[Yannick Koehler <yannick.koehler@colubris.com>]

Matt Beland wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 01:17:41PM -0500, Yannick Koehler wrote:
> 
>>Yannick Koehler wrote:
>>
>>>Guys,
>>>
>>>   not sure for anyone else but is init.d really need to be protected?  
>>>I mean does someone really change files in that directory (other than 
>>>adding or removing)?
>>>
>>>   That dir should always get merged.  It would also get really nice of 
>>>the portage could detect that no changes has been made to the file since 
>>>its installation and therefore merge it without any issues.
>>>
>>>   Like if the protected config file's time were saved in a temp files 
>>>that portage would look into before merging to see if the date has or 
>>>not change since the last install.
>>>
>>>Yannick Koehler
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>gentoo-dev mailing list
>>>gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
>>>http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
>>>
>>
>>Another point I have to make here is that there's a lot of files in 
>>there and MOST people won't change them.  Therefore the fact that each 
>>time someone play in there make 80-90% people force to merge many files 
>>is not really friendly.
>>
> 
> Friendly, no, but it is proper behavior. Those files are critical to the 
> proper operation of the system, and as such changes should be approached
> with caution. Even if you as a Gentoo user are not making any customized
> changes, it's a very good idea for you to be aware of changes in those 
> files - that way, if you do emerge update --world and one of your daemons
> breaks, you know if there've been any changes to the init script. It may 
> not be a critical issue for you, but it will be for some.
> 
> 

While I agree they are critical, I don't agree that they are more 
important than the program they control.  And that program is emerge 
automatically.  If the script work but the program failed after an 
emerge I think it is at the same critical level.

Therefore I think they should be treated the same.  Now they are treated 
as config file and require end-users intervention when I don't see a 
reason for most end-user.  Like programs, some users will modify their 
program by using personnaly modified source tree and those would know 
not to put the binary or merge those package.

Actually I think it's even worse treating those files as config. 
Because new users, the one that you always want to get in a distro may 
be running pretty old script as they may not be aware on how to do the 
merge step manually.

Yannick Koehler