mergemaster feature suggestion...

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 12:37 AM +0200 12/22/03, Evren Yurtesen wrote:
>
>About those old files, I think any old file which doesn't
>exist in newer release does not only waste space and cause
>confusion. Also it might cause security problems.

This is a very reasonable position.  It is such a reasonable
idea that this topic reappears every few months...  :-)

>I often thought of a way to remove older files.

The problem is that the general solution is much harder to do
than it first appears.  It is one thing to come up with a
solution that works well for what "you" (ie, any one developer)
need, but it is much more challenging to come up with a solution
that everyone can always use, for every upgrade, and that they
can rely on.  You can not have installworld just blindly
removing files.  That tactic *will* cause trouble.

The fact that this issue keeps coming up is a good indication
that we need to do something.  Every once-in-while I try my
own hand at implementing some solution, but so far I have not
come up with anything that I am 100% happy with.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu