"Chatty" config files in /etc

[Garance A Drosehn]

On Aug 30/06, Tom Rhodes asks the reasonable question:
>On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:28:34 +0400
>Ruslan Ermilov <ru at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>
>  > On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 01:41:51PM -0400, Garance A Drosehn wrote:
>  > >
>>  > I do think those comments and examples are useful, but it might be
>  > > better to move those lines into separate files.
>  >
>  > I think they should be moved to /usr/share/examples/etc/ (like
>>  make.conf), with files in /etc/ representing good (short) defaults
>  > with a minimum of comments and probably references to examples.
>
>Question is, what files will be moved?  All configuration files
>or just "some" ?

I would not move "all" of them.  I think the proper rule would be
"Split up the ones which constantly annoy me when they change".
Obviously that's a rather subjective criteria...

We could pick off a few and change those, and then see if there
are anymore which should be split up.  My list would be:
     /etc/hosts
     /etc/hosts.allow
     /etc/pf.conf
     /etc/printcap

These are files which have "too many" helpful comments or examples
in them, and which I have to modify on every single machine I ever
bring up.  So *every* time one of these changes, I have to stop and
stare at the diff in the mergemaster step, and 99% of the time the
change is just to fix or improve some comment.  And in many cases,
the change is to some line that I remove in my custom copy.  Now
all of those changes seem to be good changes, but they are still
an annoyance when it comes to merging in my local changes.

I've also had a vague plan to split up /etc/newsyslog.conf, but
in that case most of the lines I want to move are "real" lines
(not comments), so that requires some coding changes to make it
work the way I'd want it to work.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn     =               drosehn at rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer               or   gad at FreeBSD.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;             Troy, NY;  USA