Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] emaint and handling of user editable files

[Simon Stelling]

Christian Hoenig wrote:
> On the other hand it would be very nice to allow comments in the world file,
> too, as I very often don't remember why I installed a package (a lib which
> for example was just a dependency for lokaly installed stuff).
> As I'm writing this I get the idea, that this probalby should not be part of
> the world file but of portage itself with a --comment TEXT parameter :-).

That sounds awkward. Why introduce a new option to portage if you could just 
fire up your preferred text editor and create a whyiinstalledthisstuff file? 
Really, this is not the purpose of a package manager IMO.

> So, finally, how should emaint --fix deal with comments in files?
> (a) Only give a recommendation what / how to fix?
> (b) Fix if there are no comments contained, otherwise only do (a)?
(c) make emaint --fix comment the lines out instead of removing them entirely. 
That way, you could just ignore comments and it would be a lot safer too.. I 
simply don't like the idea very much of having a tool removing lines from my 
config files. You could use ## or #@ (or whatever) to comment the lines out, 
which should be easy to recognize for the user. It would take a few seconds to 
cut the lines starting with said prefix out of the file, and the user could 
remove old comments in the same go.

Regards,

-- 
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@g.o
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