"Automerging trivial changes"

M104 · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 2:30 am Post subject: "Automerging trivial changes"

I have a small, but very important problem with 'etc-update'. After emerging a package, portage will tell me that there are some config files that need updating. When I run etc-update, however, it will automerge every file! I've searched through the forums and man pages and the only suggestion is to set eu_automerge="no". I have this set and there is no change in etc-update's behavior, even after emerging the latest portage! Also, sometimes I will re-emerge a package and no ._cfg000_xxxxx file will be created. This configuration file behavior seems to have changed from the way it worked a moth or so ago. Can anybody comment on this or help me with etc-update?

Thanks in advance!

David_Escott · l33t Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 952 Location: Boston, MA

i wouldnt worry, this is a nice new feature. as i understand it etc-update will now automatically merge files whose only difference is the cvs comment at the top. So these automerged files are ones without substantive changes, just the timestamp is updated

pens · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 7:45 am Post subject:

that's a good idea. that's one of the more annoying things about gentoo.

M104 · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 12:13 pm Post subject:

Thank you for your replies. This automerging behavior is atypical, however, since one of the first files automerged was make.conf! I think losing your USE settings is someting to worry about! I'm really greatful that I didn't etc-update after 'emerge baselayout`

I figured it out, though. After scratching my head for about an hour I looked at the 'etc-update' script and played around with it a bit. It turns out that colordiff was messing up the difference checking and letting every file pass the 'trivial change' test. This makes perfect sense now that I think about it. For the past few weeks I have been using colordiff in place of diff and the color esacpe sequences were messing up the update script. This is about the length of time that etc-update has been acting weird.

Moral of the story: Don't use colordiff with etc-update! Too bad really, because I like etc-update and colordiff. Oh well...

Cheers!

David_Escott · l33t Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 952 Location: Boston, MA

and make sure make.conf is a hard link not a sym link that is the other irritating thing that in this case emerge for some reason doesnt know about