A smarter mergemaster

[Mike Meyer]

In <200510012034.j91KYWPQ064132 at gate.bitblocks.com>, Bakul Shah <bakul at BitBlocks.com> typed:
> Here is an idea for the mergemaster hackers' consideration!
> 
> By keeping /etc files in a source repository one can archive
> and document all local changes.  This is useful for some of
> the same reasons for which we keep sources in a repo:
> recovery from mistakes, reuse of old code, checking who did
> what, more than one person can make changes, tracking
> history, debugging etc.

Yup. I've been doing that for about a decade. It also makes a nice
tool for disaster recovery. Rather than backing up all the
FreeBSD-supplied softare, I back up the repository. After a disk loss,
I pull the original install disks, reinstall, then check out the
config files from the repository.

> If mergemaster handled or worked with a local cvs /etc repo
> that'd be very nice!  The idea is to make changes and test
> them in a temp workspace and commit them *only if they do the
> right thing*!  I envision a workflow something like this
> (using make for illustration purposes):

It really ought to provide hooks of some kind for dealing with the
repository, rather than having CVS wired into it, as some of us prefer
newer tools to CVS. But that's a minor detail.

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.