O Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 03:32:22PM -0800, Atom Powers wrote: > > I would say that this is beyond the scope of the tool.
It may not have been a very good example. > "undo" means "un-do": reverse what you did. I think this is simplistic. To try again with the example of changing modes on a directory, say recursively setting modes: how do you undo this action unless you maintain extensive state information about the modes beforehand? You can't get around maintaining state information if you expect to implement an undo function. How long do you maintain this info? What does this 'memory' of the way things were mean beyond the present transaction? Things change, and you might consider such changes beyond the scope of the tool, but I don't see how 'undo' could ever be convergent or reliable (guess that's redundant). The path forward may be as simple as reverting to a previous configuration (that's why version control is important). But it has to involve thinking, and new configurations, the same process used in initially shooting oneself in the foot, even though that may not offer a real [good] solution (you probably don't remember what the modes were initially on all those files and subdirectories either). As appealing as the idea is, and maybe it's shortsighted of me, but I think 'undo' will remain an academic notion, from the how-to-save-a-sysadmin-from-him/herself school of thought. Have any other tools addressed 'undo'? -Ed _______________________________________________ Help-cfengine mailing list Help-cfengine@cfengine.org http://cfengine.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine
