[Bug 252417] mergemaster: deprecation and removal plan

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https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=252417

            Bug ID: 252417
           Summary: mergemaster: deprecation and removal plan
           Product: Base System
           Version: CURRENT
          Hardware: Any
                OS: Any
            Status: New
          Severity: Affects Some People
          Priority: ---
         Component: bin
          Assignee: bugs at FreeBSD.org
          Reporter: ngie at FreeBSD.org

mergemaster(8) has been deprecated for several releases and its
replacement--etcupdate(8)--has been present in production systems since at
least 9.x/10.x.

Reasons for deprecating/removing mergemaster(8) are as follows:
1. It doesn't have a maintainer.
2. It's not being actively developed.
3. It was made fragile with the move from svn to git (it relies on RCS tags
like $FreeBSD$, which are no longer incremented when touched, requiring manual
human intervention).

It's past time to replace mergemaster(8) with etcupdate(8).

This bug will track the following items:
* Reconciling all missing features (if any) between etcupdate(8) and
mergemaster(8) so the transition can be relatively painless.
* Replacing mergemaster(8) with etcupdate(8) in documentation (in base and
docs). Affected areas [in base] in my svn checkout (which is admittedly dated)
appear to be as follows:
$ grep -rIl mergemaster .
contrib/sendmail/FREEBSD-upgrade
release/tools/vmimage.subr
release/scripts/mm-mtree.sh
release/Makefile
share/man/man8/beinstall.8
share/man/man7/build.7
targets/pseudo/userland/Makefile.depend
tools/build/beinstall.sh
usr.sbin/etcupdate/etcupdate.8
usr.sbin/Makefile
usr.sbin/mergemaster/...
Makefile
UPDATING
$

* Adding appropriate messaging in the utility to note the deprecation/removal
plan.

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