I cannot understand it either. It says things like left/right but
shows things top/bottom.
There's a (vertical) line separating the two diff outputs. One is on the left (the original) and one is on the right (the proposed changes).
So left/right refers to, do you want to use the original data for this block of data (which you may read on the left-hand side of the screen), or insert the new changes (which are displayed on the right-hand side of the screen).
I never know what it's doing so I quit, save files, let it do the replacement and then compare the files again to put my edits back in. Worse I jsut don't do the update. My cups configuration is waiting for attention. So are a few others.
In general, I don't find etc-update difficult to use at all-- in fact, generally I find it easy to use (though sometimes tedious).
Admittedly, changing the diff from plain vanilla diff to colordiff (or even meld, if you're into that) really does help a lot in terms of readability.
On the whole, as long as I keep in mind what the point of the exercise is (to compare the differences between the current configuration file and a proposed update to that file, and allow me to select with a fair amount of control how to merge them), it works quite well. On the other hand, I can't understand how to use dispatch-conf at all.
The process, for me, is simple--
1) look at each file (to see if it's something I would have edited, or has custom settings; I usually know this, but sometimes a file comes up that I'm not really familiar with).
2) if it's a binary (which still come up as diffs, but for obvious reasons have no diff output), something "stupid" (updates to translations of languages I don't speak, or a config file for a server I don't use, but have installed for whatever reason), or a system script (which I don't edit), I just accept it (although system scripts I do check first-- the change where the contents of net.eth0 and net.lo reversed was alarming, until I realized that they basically exchanged contents and then it was funny. Works well, too; it was apparently a good idea).
3) If it's a config file that I "care" about (Samba, CUPS, whatever), I use 'interactive merge' to preserve the lines that contain my settings, and take all the other changes (unless the changes obsolete my settings, like in /etc/rc.conf). On rare occasions, there's something I want from both blocks and getting the new settings means removing a line from the old that I think I want. This doesn't happen often, and when it does is limited to one line, or a few easily recognizable lines, that I then edit manually after finishing the operation on the file. That really doesn't happen often (CUPS, usually, I think, since the format of the config file changed or something, and the update basically removes my settings because they're in a block where a comment is in the new file).
4) Ridiculous updates (like any offered change to /etc/fstab) I just keep the original so that /etc/update is happy, and I am too (because the system boots).
I still am not sure why people have such an issue with etc-update-- it is doing a complex job, to be sure, but imo it does it as clearly and simply as is possible under the circumstances. You do have to pay attention (and this can be painful after an emerge -e world, or an emerge -uDtv world), but that comes with the territory, and one of the reasons that I'm a Gentoo user and not a SuSE user is because I have some interest in knowing what's going on. So paying attention is something I actually *want* to do, thus, not a problem.
Admittedly, etc-update is not always the brightest bulb in the box (offering to update /etc/fstab is dopey, and that CUPS thing is rather ditzy too, and diff doesn't always split exchangable blocks where I think they should be split), but I don't blame it for that, as I'm not convinced it could really be "smarter" than it is, given that some of its limitations come from the more 'open' nature of Linux itself (for example, if config files had a standard format, then there would not be a question of where the blocks to be exchanged actually were).
I myself find it a wonderful tool that allows me to do a hard job without additional difficulty above that of the task itself, 98% of the time-- and to me, that's enough of a miracle that I don't mind overlooking its minor flaws.
Holly
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