About mergemaster (Re: upgrading)

[Mike Porter]

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On Monday 22 September 2003 12:55 pm, Lowell Gilbert wrote:


> far as I can see from the PR database.  The mergemaster author didn't
> especially like the idea, because he thinks people ought to know how
> their computers are configured.
>
> I'll be happy to take a look at your patches when you get it working.


The only problem with this theory is a significant number of the files flagged 
by mergemaster, the only difference is the cvs version tag (in theory, this 
shouldn't be happening, since the cvs tag shouldn't update unless something 
in the file changes, but I have seen this nonetheless.  Somewhat along the 
same lines are files where the only changes are changes to typos in comments, 
or adding/deleting comments, which have no functional difference on the file 
itself.). 

 I tend to agree in many of the rest of the cases, but what about files that 
rarely, if ever, change from update to update? (rc.network, for example, 
which hasn't changed since July, or how about rc.isdn and rc.i386, which show 
version lines from early 2001, for more extreme examples)  Granted these 
files won't trigger mergemaster, unless changed (in which case you could 
generally simply keep your existing file; unless something else changes and 
you need merge the files.

I would strongly support a mechanism for asking for user input: "file 
rc.network is unchaged from default, but the new version is different.  
(v)iew/(c)ontinue? [v]"  This would give the user the choice to be ignorant, 
and sometimes, I would choose that, jsut becuase I want to get done 
(especially if I am merging on the second or third machine, let alone 50 or 
100)...also a scripting mechanism to automate installation on multiple 
machines.

well, i've rambled on long enough...

mike


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