Mergemaster Request (RE: mergemaster tips)

[Olivier Tharan]

* Anton Zavrin <antonzav at pacbell.net> (20030420 18:32):
> What are those: CVS $Id's? Last time I was using mergemaster I got many
> files with the same CVS $Id's and they were deleted or something.

The CVS $Id$ have to do with version control, managed with the FreeBSD
developers. The goal of mergemaster  is to take into account new
elements of configuration files while trying to keep your local
modifications. If/when mergemaster detects the CVS $Id$ has not changed,
it means the file in the FreeBSD tree has not changed, so it will not
bother trying to update the file, even if it is not the same as in the
sources.

> Need a better explanation of such little things like: "!", "---", "+++",
> etc.

You need to be a little more familiar with patch(1) and diff(1), they
can help you even if you don't do development.

> I think I was wrong about saying that man pages are not good, what I
> meant is that would be great to have a help page/FAQ with real life
> examples of how to use mergemaster, entire process.

What I usually use was taken from Usenet:
- "mergemaster -svia" to do the automatic part (the files that will be
  upgraded without your consideration)
- "mergemaster -vr" to do the actual merging on the remaining files.

You should review the man page to understand each option. What I usually
add between both commands is "PAGER=less" because I prefer less to more
to view the diffs.

-- 
olive