Martin Baehr is on permanent record as saying: :On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 01:10:34PM +1200, Volker Kuhlmann wrote: : :> I never said bash is bad, just that making it work the way I :> need it takes more time than I have. : :which falls exactly in line with my argument about not wanting to :configure things.
[snip] :i said "if i can avoid it", and i meant configuration that is not unique :to a machine. abviously settings that need to differ from one machine to :the next (like networking) must be configured, but for the rest i expect :usable defaults. This is something that I've been looking into for a short while. I find that a few custom configurations would be more useful if available in all my shell environments (laptop, offsite mail shell, work). Specifically, vim and mutt come to mind. I've spent a fair amount of time configuring both to my liking, and still revisit them as I run into more useful ideas. The problem is keeping these files in sync, while allowing for site-specific differences. After putting this question to a number of friends, it seemed that this might be a job for My Favourite Version Control Software. My current plan (which is still incomplete, because I can procrastinate better than anybody...) is to set up a cvs repository (over ssh, of course) on my shell account (static IP) which can be accessed from any of my other locations. This will allow me to maintain a single instance of configurations. Since most of the software that I'm planning to apply this to allows for the config file to include other files, I can split up sections into general and site-specific components. For instance: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/ice$ ls -l .mutt* -rw-r--r-- 1 greg greg 501 2003-07-15 21:44 .muttrc .mutt.d: total 32 -rw-r--r-- 1 greg greg 3433 2003-07-15 21:43 aliases -rw-r--r-- 1 greg greg 349 2003-07-15 21:43 colours -rw-r--r-- 1 greg greg 1868 2003-07-15 21:43 gpg -rw-r--r-- 1 greg greg 481 2003-07-16 18:19 hooks -rw-r--r-- 1 greg greg 684 2003-07-15 21:43 macros -rw-r--r-- 1 greg greg 1292 2003-07-15 21:44 mailboxes -rw-r--r-- 1 greg greg 996 2003-07-15 21:43 options There may be better ways to share these files (fsync, unison, etc) for your purposes, but I found I liked the recoverability of cvs/repository tools. That way if I break a config due to software versions becoming inconsistent, I can shift back to a prior configuration. This also allows me to change a config from any of my locations and provide the changes upward. However, suggestions are more than welcome. (knowledge: share and enjoy) Because each distro has different defaults, not to mention other UNIX flavours, I don't plan to trust a sensible default config to be satisfactory. Once the infrastructure is in place, the work is relatively minimal and maintenance is simple. Greg --- -
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