[gentoo-portage-dev] About some settings to auto-replace with dispatch-conf

[gentoo-portage-dev] About some settings to auto-replace with dispatch-conf

[Pacho Ramos]

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Hello

I recently installed Gentoo on my uncle's laptop and he was a bit
annoyed about needing to run "dispatch-conf" and merge a lot of changes
on files nobody ever touched.

Looking to /etc/dispatch-conf.conf I noticed options to improve this
situation exist, but they are disabled by default. I would want to
confirm if they are safe enough or could cause problems. Options are:

# Automerge files comprising only whitespace and/or comments
# (yes or no)
replace-wscomments=no

# Automerge files that the user hasn't modified
# (yes or no)
replace-unmodified=no

Looks really surprising to me that "replace-wscomments" is not enabled
by default as merging that changes shouldn't hurt at all. About
"replace-unmodified", if it works as intended, it should also be safer
to get it enabled by default as would prevent breakage if people forgets
to run dispatch-conf, reboot and, for example, sees some init.d script
fail to start.

Thanks a lot for the info

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Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] About some settings to auto-replace with dispatch-conf

[Zac Medico]

On 05/15/2012 04:15 AM, Pacho Ramos wrote:
> Hello
> 
> I recently installed Gentoo on my uncle's laptop and he was a bit
> annoyed about needing to run "dispatch-conf" and merge a lot of changes
> on files nobody ever touched.
> 
> Looking to /etc/dispatch-conf.conf I noticed options to improve this
> situation exist, but they are disabled by default. I would want to
> confirm if they are safe enough or could cause problems. Options are:
> 
> # Automerge files comprising only whitespace and/or comments
> # (yes or no)
> replace-wscomments=no
> 
> # Automerge files that the user hasn't modified
> # (yes or no)
> replace-unmodified=no
> 
> Looks really surprising to me that "replace-wscomments" is not enabled
> by default as merging that changes shouldn't hurt at all. About
> "replace-unmodified", if it works as intended, it should also be safer
> to get it enabled by default as would prevent breakage if people forgets
> to run dispatch-conf, reboot and, for example, sees some init.d script
> fail to start.
> 
> Thanks a lot for the info

FEATURES=config-protect-if-modified is what you really want. We could
probably enable it by default, but we should ask for comment on the
gentoo-dev mailing list before doing that.
-- 
Thanks,
Zac

Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] About some settings to auto-replace with dispatch-conf

[Pacho Ramos]

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El mar, 15-05-2012 a las 08:31 -0700, Zac Medico escribió:
> On 05/15/2012 04:15 AM, Pacho Ramos wrote:
> > Hello
> > 
> > I recently installed Gentoo on my uncle's laptop and he was a bit
> > annoyed about needing to run "dispatch-conf" and merge a lot of changes
> > on files nobody ever touched.
> > 
> > Looking to /etc/dispatch-conf.conf I noticed options to improve this
> > situation exist, but they are disabled by default. I would want to
> > confirm if they are safe enough or could cause problems. Options are:
> > 
> > # Automerge files comprising only whitespace and/or comments
> > # (yes or no)
> > replace-wscomments=no
> > 
> > # Automerge files that the user hasn't modified
> > # (yes or no)
> > replace-unmodified=no
> > 
> > Looks really surprising to me that "replace-wscomments" is not enabled
> > by default as merging that changes shouldn't hurt at all. About
> > "replace-unmodified", if it works as intended, it should also be safer
> > to get it enabled by default as would prevent breakage if people forgets
> > to run dispatch-conf, reboot and, for example, sees some init.d script
> > fail to start.
> > 
> > Thanks a lot for the info
> 
> FEATURES=config-protect-if-modified is what you really want. We could
> probably enable it by default, but we should ask for comment on the
> gentoo-dev mailing list before doing that.

Didn't know about that option, thanks for pointing it :D

About trying to enable it by default, I think would make sense per
previous exposed reasons (and I am sure there are more examples that
could show that behavior is better than keeping obsolete config files by
default)


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Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] About some settings to auto-replace with dispatch-conf

[Pacho Ramos]

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El mar, 15-05-2012 a las 21:43 +0200, Pacho Ramos escribió:
> El mar, 15-05-2012 a las 08:31 -0700, Zac Medico escribió:
> > On 05/15/2012 04:15 AM, Pacho Ramos wrote:
> > > Hello
> > > 
> > > I recently installed Gentoo on my uncle's laptop and he was a bit
> > > annoyed about needing to run "dispatch-conf" and merge a lot of changes
> > > on files nobody ever touched.
> > > 
> > > Looking to /etc/dispatch-conf.conf I noticed options to improve this
> > > situation exist, but they are disabled by default. I would want to
> > > confirm if they are safe enough or could cause problems. Options are:
> > > 
> > > # Automerge files comprising only whitespace and/or comments
> > > # (yes or no)
> > > replace-wscomments=no
> > > 
> > > # Automerge files that the user hasn't modified
> > > # (yes or no)
> > > replace-unmodified=no
> > > 
> > > Looks really surprising to me that "replace-wscomments" is not enabled
> > > by default as merging that changes shouldn't hurt at all. About
> > > "replace-unmodified", if it works as intended, it should also be safer
> > > to get it enabled by default as would prevent breakage if people forgets
> > > to run dispatch-conf, reboot and, for example, sees some init.d script
> > > fail to start.
> > > 
> > > Thanks a lot for the info
> > 
> > FEATURES=config-protect-if-modified is what you really want. We could
> > probably enable it by default, but we should ask for comment on the
> > gentoo-dev mailing list before doing that.
> 
> Didn't know about that option, thanks for pointing it :D
> 
> About trying to enable it by default, I think would make sense per
> previous exposed reasons (and I am sure there are more examples that
> could show that behavior is better than keeping obsolete config files by
> default)
> 

Just noticed the problem of current behavior after updating my chroot to
generate emul packages and needing to review 40 files with
dispatch-conf, all of them never touched and all of them needing to be
updated to new version

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