removing stale files

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 9:32 AM -0600 6/11/03, M. Warner Losh wrote:
>In message: <20030611075750.GB57496 at wantadilla.lemis.com>
>             "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog at freebsd.org> writes:
>: I think we should work towards a policy where we say "these
>: directories belong to the system.  Don't install your own
>: things there until you know exactly what you are doing.".
>: That would greatly simplify the job of keeping things up
>: to date.
>
>In the past, it has been suggested that there be a 'make rmobs'

rmobs?  ... remove obsolete?

>target or something similar.  I'd strongly oppose a
>non-turn-off-able doing this as part of installworld.  That's
>too dangerous.  I've experimented with some automatically
>delete obsolete files schemes in the past, and there is
>*MUCH* potential for foot shooting and *** ******* to make
>it be on by default.

I have also tried to implement a few of my own ideas, and
often ended up with something that was just too fragile for
me to trust. I mean, I knew I could get it to work for *my*
system and what *I* need (after some trial-and-error), but
I would never trust it enough to recommend that "everyone"
could just blindly run it.

>NetBSD's approach in etcupdate is based on a master list of
>files that have gone away.

I think that something small and simple like this is what we
should do at first, because it's something we can do in a
short amount of time, and still have reasonable confidence
that we aren't doing any harm.

That's what we are doing with the "oldRC" files, and I think
we could easily list some other specific files where we know
the user should not still have those files after the upgrade.
Out-of-date locale files could be another example.  No, a
short list won't be a perfect solution, but we can at least
look at all the files in that list and say that each file in
that list *will* cause trouble if it is not removed.

Does the netbsd approach include any "meta-information" in the
master list of files which have gone away?  Something like
"delete this file if __FreeBSD_version > 500113" ?

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu