mergemaster improvement (auto-update for not modified files)

[Denis Peplin]

Hello!

Daniel O'Connor wrote:
>>>You don't need to download anything to start using etcmerge, you can just
>>>use the files from your last mergemaster.
>>
>>For etcmerge it is need to run mergemaster "one last time", or use
>>etc archive for some release.  So if mergemaster will be improved,
>>it will be better for etcmerge :)
> 
> 
> Well, you can use etcmerge if you haven't changed anything in /etc - ie on a 
> fresh install.
I made another patch to mergemaster
http://people.freebsd.org/~den/scripts/mergemaster/mergemaster-check-store.diff
It poorly tested and have known problems, so it is not recommended for
now, but shows how simular functionality can be included into
mergemaster (with this patch mergemaster can collect some checksums
itself). Unfortunately, this will help only on further updates.

> 
> Even if the checksum test is added to mergemaster it only covers one of the 
> cases etcmerge handles, it still doesn't do a 3 way merge. The merge etcmerge 
> does is very nice for removing changes to files you don't care about.
One case is the one important step to the better world :)
I hope that we can made some small improvement to mergemaster
before 5.5-RELEASE. And it is unlikely that we can introduce
something other than mergemaster in RELENG_5.

> 
> 
>>>264k is a pretty large file to commit to the repo..
>>
>>Yes, I know. And don't sure that it is some need to commit this file.
>>Anyway, this file is less that INDEX, and unlike INDEX, will not
>>rapidly changed. Checksum database will grow slowly.
> 
> 
> The INDEX file isn't in CVS anymore..
The reasons why it was removed can't be applied to checksums file.

> It probably won't grow very fast, but IMO it seems like a bit of a kludge.
I published my opinion here:
http://people.freebsd.org/~den/scripts/mergemaster/checksums-commit.html

Maybe it is not bikeshed discussion, but I don't want to continue it in
hackers at . den@ is appropriate place :)