Rajko M. wrote: > On Saturday 20 January 2007 18:39, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote: > > >> Along with many others. It is just a part of the process of learning >> your new system, one that is robust enough to tell you things you should >> do, but not so overbearing as to force its own changes on you, i.e. >> freedom. >> > > Joe, > > in this case freedom has little to do with fact Sure it does, you can choose to use another packager, do it yourself, install from source, etc., as opposed to say Windows, which will decide all those things for you without asking or usually telling you, the computer owner. > that some postinstall script > can't change your configuration file automatically as it is not designed to > cover all possible variations, and it is missing interactive part that will > ask you what to do. rpmnew files are not created by postinstall scripts. They are created by telling rpm via the spec file that a particular file is a config file, and whether to replace the old config file (creating a rpmsave file) or by not replacing it, creating the rpmnew [via %config(noreplace) in the files section]. This is done by rpm, not a script AFAIK. It is controlled by the package maker via the spec file. > It is just a way to skip creation of bloated postinstall > scripts, or change your working configuration with some default settings, > forcing you to go trough configuration again. I believe the package maker should know if the old config file would no longer work or not. Since they control that fact, our choice is to trust the packager to stay true to the package programmers and install, or not install, and do it another way. > The former can really make you > angry, if last configuration was result of a lot of manual tweaking and you > don't have backup. > True. That is why rpm has the capability. That is one of the reason I moved to Linux. The programmers making the programs are often users of those programs themselves, and they make sure error messages are helpful to them, and functionality to maintain is there as well. They do not have to concentrate on hiding their work from a competitor or making it impossible to copy, they can concentrate on making it run well and be maintainable, or they increase their own work load with cries for help. > YaST has interactive configurations, so after asking you questions it will > create new config file and you will see your old file as > foo.config.YaST2save. > Correct, as well as SuSEconfig. > The foo.config.rpmnew and foo.config.rpmsave exist for some packages and in > some situations. It isn't a mystery. They are there because the packager marked them that way, and they do that for a reason. The reason is one of compatibility with the new program as well as the fact YOU can configure your own computer. IOW, YOU can accept or reject the new config file and the program should still work (in the case of rpmnew), or if it would not be compatible, it is replaced but your old one saved for reference (in the case of rpmsave). And the script, rpmconfigcheck, also exists for a reason. It is to help you know, in a modern system with many package managers and many packages and packagers, exactly which config files need to be checked by root. I consider that freedom. But, you are free to disagree. ;-)
-- Joe Morris Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
