On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Tim Rightnour wrote:

: Do we need a sane way of dealing with config files?  It seems like having the
: pkg_delete operation fail is going to lead to trouble when trying to make an
: automated upgrade process at some point..  

AFAIK, pkg_delete doesn't actually fail, it just prints the message, deletes
everything but the changed files, and that's it.  That's at least how it
works for me with the pine pkg (for which I modify pine.conf).

: Perhaps we need a way to tag config files, so an upgrade keeps them from being
: overwritten.. a good upgrade process would do something like copy them to /tmp
: and then back out to where they were after the install..  Just thinking ahead
: here.. (someone is eventually going to get stuck tackling the upgrade issue, it
: would be nice if some framework was laid out for them when they do)

Problem is, programs can change config file formats as versions change.  A
tag would be good, and I'd rather suggest making the upgrade process move
the files to <filename>.orig, not copy them back.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)