On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Free Ekanayaka<[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Raphaël, > > |--==> On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:53:32 +0200, Raphaël Pinson <[email protected]> > said: > > > As we are in this subject, Augeas support was implemented in rpm some > > time ago. > > Out of curiosity, how does rpm support it exactly? Pointers are > welcome (sorry I'm pretty new to the subject)
>From what I understood, this is using rpm scriptlets (an equivalent of Debian's maintainer scripts) with an Augeas syntax to modify configuration files. I don't know if Jeff could give more info on this. http://rpm5.org/community/rpm-devel/3678.html > > > Packages are not supposed to modify existing configuration files unless : > > - they provide this file, or > > - they use a program provided by the package providing the > > configuration file in order to modify it (e.g. useradd). > > That's correct AFAICT. > > > - they use an augeas lens provided by the package providing the > > configuration file. > > This sounds like a nice idea. The main problem I see is the work > overhead for the maintainer. Yes, although I see that as a temporary step before these files go upstream, which should be imho the ideal situation : making Augeas a standard to manage config files in Unix systems, and having each project file their own lenses. > > The whole point of the policy is to support smooth upgrades of > configuration files which haven't been touched directly by the system > administrators. So letting other packages modify a configuration file > via augeas would probably imply that in case of changes in the format > of that configuration file, the maintainer of the package providing > the file should ensure a smooth migration from the previous one to the > new, including possible modifications performed by other packages (and > that's why there very few packages providing scripts to modify their > configuration files). A few simple examples of packages already proposing to modify configuration files : * packages adding a service to /etc/services * packages adding a rule to inetd (unless they use xinetd, which is much easier) The use of foo.d directories has greatly improved this situation (xinetd, php, apache, etc.), but there are still a lot of situations where editing a single file is mandatory. > However this a general problem, non strictly augeas-related, and > actually augeas would provide a good base to tackle it. So all in all > I'm for pushing the idea to debian-devel. OK. I see the use of Augeas in packaging as a parallel to the use of debconf. Something not mandatory, but recommended for a specific need where nothing else really fits the need. Raphaël > > > Currently, the lenses shipped with Augeas do not take in > > consideration the version of the program, and the specific > > fields/values of the configuration files linked to this > > version. Shipping the lenses with the programs would allow the > > lenses to be versionned together with the programs. > > This is another bad situation this idea would contribute to alleviate. > > Ciao! > > Free > > _______________________________________________ > augeas-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/augeas-devel > _______________________________________________ augeas-devel mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/augeas-devel
