generalized mergemaster(8)

[Doug Barton]

On Sun, 6 Apr 2003, David O'Brien wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 12:06:06PM +0100, Michael Ranner wrote:
> > Am Freitag, 21. M?rz 2003 20:27 schrieb Garance A Drosihn:
> > > >
> > > >  /var/tmp/temproot/etc/rc.d/ and /etc/rc.d/ have 17 differing
files.
> > > >  (I)nstall, (D)elete, or (R)ecursively examine? [R]
> > > >
> > > >Then I could hit 'I' and update all of /etc/rc.d at once.
> > >
> > > At times I've asked Doug about some kind of pattern-support in
> > > ~/.mergemasterrc, where the user could specify filename-patterns
> > > of files where they want the default action to be "install"
> > > instead of "leave for later".  There are pros and cons with that
> > > idea, but that's what I was thinking of for the directories you
> > > describe.
> > >
> > > Doug has suggested that people could maybe do things with the
> > > MM_PRE_COMPARE_SCRIPT, for special processing like this.

Actually, what I said is that doing this is quite easy, and I've posted
the proof of concept script on multiple occasions.

> > I have a small patch for pattern-support in ~/.mergemasterrc and
> > already sent my ideas to Doug, but he said "It could/should
> > be done with MM_PRE_COMPARE_SCRIPT" to me.
>
> Could you post them??
>
> Dougb says that all the time, but has never created an example that will
> do what 90% of us want.  Every time the desire for this comes up, dougb
> says it is outside of the envisioned purpose of mergemaster.  Seems to me
> that if the tool isn't meeting the desires of 90% of your user base, maybe
> it could grow the functionality desired....

The problem with that statement is that your perception is heavily
influenced by the fact that you're a developer. Way more than 90% of
mergemaster's users do only occasional upgrades, and need the script to be
simple and safe. Power users (like most of the developer community) should
be able to handle the kind of customizations that are most frequently
requested themselves, or crib them from a set of examples, that I'm still
interested in committing.

Doug

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