generalized mergemaster(8)

[Doug Barton]

On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, M. Warner Losh wrote:

> In message: <20030321082108.GA7590 at cirb503493.alcatel.com.au>
>             Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy at optushome.com.au> writes:
> : Have you considered emacs ediff-directories?  It might be better suited
> : than mergemaster for handling arbitrary directories.
>
> NetBSD also has usr.sbin/etcupdate, which appears to be a redone
> mergemaster which seems to a little better.

s/better/different/  etcupdate is trying to do a different job. I've
talked to Luke about the way NetBSD handles the etc updating, and while I
don't think it's a BAD way to do things, I'm not sure it's the best way.
The particular thing about etcupdate that troubles me is that it has
intimate knowledge of the files it's supposed to update, which means a lot
of work to keep it up to date.

> Personally, I wish that there was a set of scripts that did the
> following:

[snipped the cvs utopian dream] :)

> But that's quite a bit different than mergemaster, and a lot more
> overhead to setup unless the scripts are very smart...

Really, really hard, and really, really different. Also very hard to do in
a way that works for more than a handful of power users.

Doug

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