svn: head/usr.sbin/mergemaster

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:07:55 -0800, Doug Barton <dougb at FreeBSD.org> said:

> Garrett Wollman wrote:
>> It would be much better if the options that *nearly every user will
>> want to use* are set correctly by default. 

> 1. Past experience indicates that your average _developer_ is not very
> good at estimating what the average _user_ will want as the default.

Speaking as a user, far more than a developer these days, what
mergemaster does by default is not what I want.  I have about half a
dozen FreeBSD systems in various states of "production", and they get
upgraded about once a year, if that, and always run the security
branch.

> 4. I have said literally from day 1 that mergemaster should not ever
> change a file on a user's system without them taking an affirmative
> step for it to do so. Whether you agree with that idea or not, it is
> an expectation that I do not want to mess with.

Does anyone else have that expectation, or do they think of it as an
annoying quirk of the program and wish the author would make it be
more helpful by default?  Is there any evidence that the current
default behavior is the Right Thing for the typical user?  (Serious
question.  Maybe it solves some problem that's not the one that I
have; I haven't done a survey.)

-GAWollman