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aethyr
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Joined: 06 Apr 2003
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Location: NYC
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 Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2003 12:03 am Post subject: Automerge by default? |
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Since I have a bit of free time on my hands, I decided to upgrade some of my basic Gentoo tools.
I was using gentoolkit-0.1.17-r3 and portage-0.46-r12 and decided to upgrade to the newer stable x86 versions gentoolkit-0.1.21-r1 and portage-2.0.47-r10.
I updated gentoolkit first, which alerted me that I had three changes to make, /etc/make.conf, /etc/make.globals, and /etc/etc-update.conf. "No problem," I thought to myself, "I'll just run etc-update". Within moments after hitting etc-update, I was a bit surprised to see that changes were being automerged. I'm not a big fan of having changes made to my system files without me knowing what happened, but unfortunately I can't even see what changes were made. Even more unfortunately, my custom /etc/make.conf file was completely lost, seemingly entirely replaced by the new file.
This is not what I call a "trivial/comment change" (as per description of /etc/etc-update.conf).
I ended up going through and redoing as much of my make.conf file as I could remember (completely redoing my USE flags and CCFLAGS), all the while cursing automerge.
The question I pose is this: should we be turning on dangerous features like these by changing the default to make it convenient for users who did not understand how to use etc-update in its previous default behavior of manual merges.
I was a bit shocked by the whole event, since its one of the few times Gentoo has so blatantly stepped on my toe.
I suppose I will have to tread with caution from now on (I'm scared to know what will happen after I update my baselayout, which portage is now telling me I must do).
While we're addressing automatic behavior, I'm curious to know the reasoning behind setting Autoclean to default. I realize that this was made the default a few months ago to address a bug in the GCC ebuilds (if I recall correctly), however, this seems quite hackish. Of course, I had to edit my make.conf to set Autoclean to off after my previous make.conf (with all my preferences) was overwritten to the upgrade of gentoolkit.
I think these are issues that should be addressed with care as I find Gentoo seems to be overstepping its bounds a bit by setting these to default. Note, I have no problem with the features themselves, only the enabling of them by default.
I think Gentoo should perform a minimal set of changes by default, leaving it to the user's discretion if they would care to let Gentoo manage more complicated configuration settings automatically. |
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pjp
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Joined: 16 Apr 2002
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| Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2003 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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If I'm understanding you correctly, the automerge only happens on files that have a header difference or something similar. I've never had my make.conf hosed this way. Not sure what the problem might be.
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aethyr
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Location: NYC
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| Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2003 8:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | If I'm understanding you correctly, the automerge only happens on files that have a header difference or something similar |
Accoding to etc-update itself, this is how it works, however my experience was quite different.
I'm almost willing to accept that and write it off as a bug. I mean theoretically I should have backed up those three files. However, all of my experience with etc-update to that point was that when you ran it, it brought up a menu in which you could manually merge changes. Now, after updating to a new version, the behavior that I was expecting based on previous usage was changed, without any indication.
I think the point is that there's a fundamental difference in attitude between turning these things on by default and leaving them off by default. Also, changing the default behavior of a program without any indication to the end-user is fallacious.
I think Gentoo, and by extension its developers, should carefully consider what attitude they take towards these features. |
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avendesora
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Joined: 16 Aug 2002
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Location: Betelgeuse vicinity
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2003 9:43 am Post subject: |
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| There's been some discussion around these forums about make.conf getting hosed. Can't remember what the issue was, but try searching for it and you might find an explanation. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2003 5:15 pm Post subject: |
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I'm thinking it might have been something else. I could be mistaken though since it has been a while since I've installed that version of etc-update.
/etc/etc-update.conf has a setting for "eu_automerge". I was thinking I had to manually set it to yes. Perhaps the earlier versions had an einfo line or something (a warning/info message after the ebuild is installed).
If you haven't edited the /etc/etc-update.conf file and automerge is set to yes, then it might be worth filing a bug report for defaulting to no (if there isn't one already). Also, CONFIG_PROTECT, in /etc/make.conf, may not have been configured correctly.
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jimlynch11
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Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 590
Location: massachusetts
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2003 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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yeah my automerge is set to yes, and it hosed like all of my important config files. make.conf, fstab, users, etc etc...
where can i find backups to these (are there backups?) and how do i keep etc-update from doing this again? |
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