Recommendations for config file revision control

[Kevin Downey]

On 6/1/07, Maxim Khitrov <mkhitrov at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm currently setting up a new server, and I'd like to keep track of
> all changes made to various config files (in /etc, /usr/local/etc, and
> a few other places perhaps). My first thought was to setup a
> subversion server which would contain the partial directory structure
> that matches that of the server's starting at /. It would contain
> versioned copies of all the configuration files that I want to keep
> track of in their appropriate locations. What I would do then is write
> a hook for subversion that will issue an automatic export command
> (don't want .svn directories everywhere) every time a commit is made
> to the repository. So to edit some configuration file I would first
> checkout a working copy of the repository to some other location, make
> the change and commit it. The server would be automatically updated
> with the new file and I would be able to keep track of every change.
>
> This seems like a decent strategy to me, but before I go off writing
> the scripts and setting up the server I wanted to ask what you guys
> might be using to keep track of the server configuration (backups
> don't count)? Is there an easier way of doing the same thing, for
> example, eliminating the need to do a working copy checkout first?
> Perhaps a way to monitor certain files for changes, and automatically
> commit them every time a change is saved. I'd be glad to hear any
> suggestions you might have in this regard. If possible, I'd like all
> the versioned files to contain an id string, so that it's easy to
> determine when the file was last changed and by whom, but this is
> optional. For the most part I just need a way of going back to
> previous versions.
>
> Thanks,
> Maxim Khitrov

What is the objection to having the metadata directories (.svn) everywhere?

devel/bazaar-ng is rather nice, and distributed vcs is very flexible.
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