FS#12183 - Some sort of automatic pacnew merging

Attached to Project: Pacman
Opened by JD (jdhore) - Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 19:02 GMT
Last edited by Dan McGee (toofishes) - Sunday, 23 November 2008, 05:35 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To Dan McGee (toofishes)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version None
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

I believe handling of .pacnew files should be handled automatically. I recently had a problem with dhcpcd failing on boot and it turns out there was a .pacnew file for it in /etc/conf.d/ that had the fix which i totally forgot was there...So i have 2 proposals:

1. Include a .pacold file with packages when a conf file changes (or requires a .pacnew), if the old config file (say dhcpcd.conf) matches the .pacold (dhcpcd.conf.pacold), meaning the user hasn't changed it, remove the old dhcpcd.conf, remove the .pacold file and automatically rename dhcpcd.conf.pacnew to dhcpcd.conf so people who don't change some of their .conf files don't have to deal with it.

2. When a .pacnew comes in on a package upgrade, do what debian does and throw up a menu asking: 1. Look at the difference between the 2 files (uses diff -u old.file new.file > less and dumps back to this menu on exiting less), 2. replace current with $file.pacnew, 3. keep current, remove $file.pacnew, 4. edit $file.pacnew and replace current with it.

I think one of these outcomes would make it much easier for new users and people who don't edit all their .conf files alike to have fewer issues.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Dan McGee (toofishes)
Sunday, 23 November 2008, 05:35 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't implement
Additional comments about closing:  See comments.
Comment by Pierre Schmitz (Pierre) - Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 20:46 GMT
point 1 is allerady implemented.
Comment by JD (jdhore) - Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 21:04 GMT
I haven't noticed that because it seems to me that with at least 3 .conf files that i haven't modified (/etc/conf.d/dhcpcd, /etc/mke2fs.conf and one other which is escaping me ATM), i have/had .pacnew files.
Comment by Ronald van Haren (pressh) - Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 23:03 GMT
dhcpcd and e2fsprogs had their default config files changed from the previous repo version so that is why there was a pacnew installed.
Comment by Glenn Matthys (RedShift) - Saturday, 22 November 2008, 12:01 GMT
Yeah... point 2 not gonna happen. You should read pacman's output when doing operations. It's you that failed. This is not a hand-holding distro. I say again: READ PACMAN'S OUTPUT.
Comment by Aaron Griffin (phrakture) - Sunday, 23 November 2008, 03:00 GMT
Assigning to Dan. I imagine he'll just close it. This task has always been the job of the user under Arch.
Comment by Dan McGee (toofishes) - Sunday, 23 November 2008, 05:33 GMT
Pay attention to pacman output. We don't hold hands here, and this is something that will not be done by pacman.

I'm sure you could write a wrapper script to do exactly what you are saying.

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