On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 16:48 +0100, Steffen Jobbagy-Felso wrote:
> This may sound harsh, but don't use automerge. Portage/etc-update cannot
> possibly know about every config change you (or the ebuilds) can make. I assume
> etc-update (rightly) doesn't even attempt this and merges based on string
> analysis without thought as to what the settings actually mean, leading to breakage.
> 
> If you never touched a file it's probably save to just overwrite the existing
> one. You always have the backup in case it wasn't save ;)
> That's how I do it anyways.

Ditto for here. However, I was thinking of implementing something more
intelligent, based around a 3-way merge. It's just a quick and dirty
script that scans for updates, ala etc-update, then calls out to
something a little more appropriate, like meld or xxdiff. It would keep
a copy of the 'vanilla' config files in /.etc (or something), and
attempt 3-way merges, assuming that /.etc/config is the common ancestor
of /etc/config and /etc/.config000 (I forget exactly how portage names
them); after a successful merge it would move the new vanilla file
to /.etc.

I hope that makes sense.

Any comments?

Regards,
Gen Zhang