On Jun 24, 2015, at 8:02 PM, Ryan Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Jun 24, 2015, at 5:10 PM, Christopher Ramos wrote: > >> Perhaps it would be feasible to employ an agent or daemon that logs >> all changes to a user's installation. That way, if it's ever bungled >> by an "outside force," the user could do something like "sudo port >> revert snapshot-06222015". This would remove any files not >> registered by the daemon to have been present at the time of the >> requested snapshot; if need be, previously installed or files (or >> files that were in a different state) would retrieved from the >> Internet. > > A daemon to detect such actions is an interesting suggestion. This > could adversely affect performance. I'm also not sure how we would > instruct the daemon what changes are ok and what changes aren't. For > example, installing /opt/local/lib/libsomething.dylib without using > MacPorts would not be ok, but creating /opt/local/etc/something.conf > would probably be fine. Installing /opt/local/bin/something would be > bad, but a database server installed with MacPorts that modifies the > contents of /opt/local/var/db/something/ while it runs would be ok. What functionality would this enable? We don't maintain a permanent local history of archives or the registry. We don't maintain old versions of the ports tarballs. We keep old binary archives on packages.macports.org, but that wouldn't help users who don't install from binaries. I don't think we can implement snapshot functionality without abusing the word "snapshot". Frankly, anyone who wants the ability to roll their installation back to a previous state should start making incremental backups. I suppose we could merely maintain a log of changes, which might be helpful when a user suspects their installation has been tampered with. vq _______________________________________________ macports-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macports-users
