rpmconf - tool to handle rpmnew and rpmsave files

[Miroslav Suchý]

I've been tired for some time of watching rpmnew and rpmsave files. I've 
been looking for some tool, but did not find any, so I wrote my own.

http://miroslav.suchy.cz/fedora/rpmconf/rpmconf

Before I spend more times on this script, I would like to hear your 
opinion. Do you find it useful? Did it already exists and I miss it in 
my search? Do you see any bugs there?

What it does:
- run "rpmconf --help" and you will see :)
- it search all config file of all installed packages and check if file 
with .rpmsave or .rpmnew exists.
- It allows you to see diff of this file against current file.
- It allows you to keep current version or the other one (rpmsave or 
rpmnew one).
- it deletes .rpmsave and .rpmnew files which are identical to current file
- after your choice it deletes the unwanted file.

And what it does not do:
- it do not delete anything. At least until you comment out DEBUG 
variable on begging of script.
- it does not search for *all* rpmsave and rpmnew files. It only search 
for installed configuration files. If package has been uninstalled and 
rpmsave has been left behind, then I do not care. If rpmsave or rpmnew 
has been created in past and now the config file is not presented in 
package any more, then I do not care too.

And before you comment out DEBUG variable, obvious question. Do you have 
backups? :)

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 14:30 +0200, Miroslav Suchý wrote:
> I've been tired for some time of watching rpmnew and rpmsave files. I've 
> been looking for some tool, but did not find any, so I wrote my own.
>
> http://miroslav.suchy.cz/fedora/rpmconf/rpmconf
>
> Before I spend more times on this script, I would like to hear your 
> opinion. Do you find it useful? Did it already exists and I miss it in 
> my search?

http://learn.clemsonlinux.org/wiki/Gentoo:etc-update

That's etc-update, originates from Gentoo, and handles rpmnew/rpmsave
files (I think it just matches any filenames in /etc that look to be
variants of each other).

Mandriva has rather simple handling of these files in its graphical
package manager, rpmdrake:

http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/soft/rpmdrake/trunk/Rpmdrake/rpmn...

it more or less just shows you a diff between the old and new configs,
and asks which you'd like to use. No editing / reconciliation is
possible. And it's in perl. =)

There may be others, but those are the ones that spring to mind.

(btw, if anyone's wondering why there's always a blank line above my sig
now, this appears to be a 'feature' of Evolution in Rawhide...it
includes a blank line before the separator in the signature block).

[Frank Murphy]

On 12/06/09 17:00, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 14:30 +0200, Miroslav Suchý wrote:
> > I've been tired for some time of watching rpmnew and rpmsave files. I've
> > been looking for some tool, but did not find any, so I wrote my own.
> >
> > http://miroslav.suchy.cz/fedora/rpmconf/rpmconf
> >
> > Before I spend more times on this script, I would like to hear your
> > opinion. Do you find it useful? Did it already exists and I miss it in
> > my search?

There is something similar in Fedora,
yum-plugin-merge-conf (not installed by default)

currently is supports vi(m)

Now if you could modify this to use Meld lets say:
meld-1.2.1-3.fc11.noarch : Visual diff and merge tool
there would be a gui version.

But, what I would say is,
if you want go ahead, that is the beauty of F\l\OSS
*choice*

Maybe with your also Meld as a frontend?

Frank

[Jan Kratochvil]

Hi,

from these tools only Gentoo looks to me to do the right thing - one has to do
a 3-files merge.  Just having the old modified file and the new unmodified
files has no solution how to do the automatic merge = how to get the new
configuration file with all the local changes of the old file brought in.

rpm should save originals of all the configuration files it installs.
On Fedora I have to save them by hand before modifying any config file (I save
them to <name>-orig files).  Then by hand (or by the automated attached
script) do the diff/patch merge.
> http://miroslav.suchy.cz/fedora/rpmconf/rpmconf
> http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/soft/rpmdrake/trunk/Rpmdrake/rpmn...
> yum-plugin-merge-conf (not installed by default)

All these tools require human interaction even in the case a fully automated
("95% safe") merge is possible.  Moreover the human can never be sure if (s)he
did not forget to merge in some of the changes from the old version of the file.
> http://learn.clemsonlinux.org/wiki/Gentoo:etc-update

Not sure if this one but maybe Gentoo dispatch-conf does the right thing.

Regards,
Jan

#! /bin/sh
set -ex
for base in "$@";do
    base=`echo $base|sed 's/[.]rpmnew$//'`
    test -f $base
    test -f $base.rpmnew
    test ! -f $base.orig
    test ! -f $base.rej

if test ! -f $base-orig
    then
    	cmp $base $base.rpmnew
    	mv -f $base.rpmnew $base
    	continue
    fi

if diff -u $base-orig $base.rpmnew | patch -f $base
    then
    	test ! -f $base.rej
    	rm -f $base.orig
    	mv -f $base.rpmnew $base-orig
    	continue
    fi
    test -f $base.orig
    test -f $base.rej
    mv -f $base.orig $base
    rm -f $base.rej
    exit 1
done
echo OK

[Seth Vidal]

On Sun, 14 Jun 2009, Jan Kratochvil wrote:
> Hi,
>
> from these tools only Gentoo looks to me to do the right thing - one has to do
> a 3-files merge.  Just having the old modified file and the new unmodified
> files has no solution how to do the automatic merge = how to get the new
> configuration file with all the local changes of the old file brought in.
>
> rpm should save originals of all the configuration files it installs.
> On Fedora I have to save them by hand before modifying any config file (I save
> them to <name>-orig files).  Then by hand (or by the automated attached
> script) do the diff/patch merge.

If you want to have all config files of all pkgs you're installing saved 
into a safe location it would not be a very complicated yum plugin to do 
it.

-sv