xdm config files overwritten after upgrading Xfree86-clients from ports

[Heinrich Rebehn]

Matthew Seaman wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:45:03PM +0200, Heinrich Rebehn wrote:
> 
>>Matthew Seaman wrote:
> 
> 
>>>However, I just keep a backup copy of the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm
>>>directory handy:
>>>
>>>   # cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/
>>>   # rsync -avx --delete xdm/ xdm.bak/
>>>
>>>	Cheers,
>>>
>>>	Matthew
>>>
>>
>>Ok, this would help for xdm. I wonder however, how many other packages are 
>>out there with similar behaviour and what other directories i should have a 
>>copy of handy.
>>
>>Or, to put it this way: I would like a port/package system that i can rely 
>>on :-)
> 
> 
> In practice, this really doesn't bite port/package users very often.
> The Porter's Handbook states:
> 
>     If your port requires some configuration files in PREFIX/etc, do
>     not just install them and list them in pkg-plist. That will cause
>     pkg_delete to delete files carefully edited by the user and a new
>     installation to wipe them out.
> 
>     Instead, install sample files with a suffix (filename.sample will
>     work well) and print out a message pointing out that the user has
>     to copy and edit the file before the software can be made to work.
> 
> (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/dads-config.html)

I filed a pr against XFree86-clients. See what happens...

> 
> which perhaps should be generalized to configuration files installed
> anywhere, rather than just under PREFIX/etc.
> 
> Of all the ports I have installed, which is several hundred
> encorporating general desktop usage, web serving, databases, etc., the
> only ones I've had problems with regarding trashing my original
> configuration files are XFree86-4-clients and the Horde, Imp, Turba
> etc. group of web apps.  (These last, to be fair, always preserve my
> config files as <filename>.previous and updates do tend to involve
> non-compatible changes to the configuration file contents.)

This is good to hear. Otherwise i would have considered moving to Debian/Linux. :-)

> 
> The only other Gotcha! of this type is when a /usr/local/etc/rc.d
> startup script gets changed to the new rc.subr(8) style.  Previously
> those scripts were generally held to be configurable files and you had
> to copy the sample file into place, edit it and make sure it was
> executable before the service would be set up to auto-start on reboot.
> With the new rc_subr style, the script doesn't need to be edited, but
> you generally have to add some lines to /etc/rc.conf to enable the
> service.
> 
> 	Cheers,
> 
> 	Matthew
> 
Cheers,
	Heinrich