"Chatty" config files in /etc

[Ceri Davies]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 08:42:19PM -0400, Garance A Drosehn wrote:
> 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...

> 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.

The "correct" way to deal with that is via MM_PRE_COMPARE_SCRIPT in
mergemaster.rc.

Ceri
-- 
That must be wonderful!  I don't understand it at all.
                                                  -- Moliere
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