Problems from old config files

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 19:24 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > Maybe it doesn't need to get that complicated. I see this part of the
> > problem as a race condition between the update process and the running
> > component. If the running component wants to write to the config file it
> > should simply notice that it has changed since the component last read
> > it and either abort the write or ask the user what to do (I'd be more in
> > favour of aborting and telling the user why).
> 
> That's no good, applications prompting for config file stuff when the user 
> just wants them to go away (i.e. when they're being closed, which is when 
> the issue usually comes up) is bad, and it also won't work if you're 
> shutting down the entire system.

In that case I'd vote for the lesser of two evils: components shouldn't
overwrite an updated config file.

poc