On Wednesday 17 September 2003 3:50 pm, Jason Stubbs wrote: > On Wednesday 17 September 2003 21:27, Joshua Banks wrote: > > LOL...... > > > > Do I need to be a computer programmer now to figure out what files I can > > update safely and which ones I should ignore, keep, > > throw-out...ect.ect..???? > > You don't need to be a programmer at all - that's much harder. What you do > need is to be comfortable with config files; there's no other way to > survive with Gentoo at the moment and possibly not in the future either. > Textual config files are the heart of GNU software and most *NIX software.
However, it's got to be said that because of etc-update's tendency to show you both what are obviously config files as well as what are obviously computer programs, there's a demarcation that would be beneficial to implement in future versions. Most of what whizzes past in etc-update is some form of computer program, I've noticed, and I really don't think it should expect me to be reprogramming some arcane part of the system, whereas a config file, such as fstab, make.conf or rc.conf is my responsibility because I altered it in the first place. I'm just growing out of the phase where I'd let etc-update do everything for me, and then take the remaining two weeks to get my system back up running. Now, etc-update isn't such an ordeal. The interactive merging thing never works, though, so I keep copies of the whole system on another drive, and derive the old un-updated config information from that. The computer programs themselves aren't my concern, so I let etc-update just do everything, but take note of what it updates. If I recognise it, then I'll copy the original back as soon as etc-update finishes. That's the best way of doing it. -- Ian Tindale -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
