Config modified?

[James Olin Oden]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, John Dennis wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-10-12 at 21:50, Ricardo Veguilla wrote:
> > Well, I know the current behavior is not ideal but, I can also imagine
> > some new users being angry because, their system keeps forgetting some
> > of it settings after an update (obviously this only affects systems
> > files, not the user settings which are usually stored in his/her
> > account).
> 
> No, system configuration settings should not be "forgotten" when an RPM
> is updated provided the spec file properly identifies configuration
> files as "noreplace". Any configuration settings that are lost on an RPM
> upgrade should probably be filed as a bug against the package.
>
noreplace is appropriate sometimes, but its far from appropriate all the 
time.  What happens if the syntax of a config file changes such that the 
old config file is incompatible with the new software?  Actually, the 
behavior of saving aside the sytem config is actually quite nice, because 
one can quickly search for such files and deal with them.  From the stand 
point of someone who has fully automated the installation, upgrade, and 
configuration of their systems, then this feature is _very_ nice.  For me 
it works like this:

	- Install on a development system that is in a known state (i.e. 
	  the same as other systems in the field or on your network.
	- Find all the config files that rpm saved.
	- Figure out how to migrate those changes to the new config file.
	- Automate these changes and package them up into an rpm or rpms,
	  or uses something else to update the config files other than 
	  rpm.

OTOH, if you just go and install a set of rpms on a production system and 
then find yourself scrambling to put old config files back in place, it is
a bit of pain.  I think Jeff Johnson summed it up best when he said 
something akin to, "rpm's handling of config files is exactly perfect, and 
entirely too complicated.".   So perhaps the way that up2date defaults to 
handling things now, yet is still overidable is a nice middle road.

Just my 2 cents...james


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