Re: RH tools and conf changes (was: Re: Vi backspace key problem)

["Chester R. Hosey" <Chester Hosey gianteagle com>]

On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 19:42 +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Chester R. Hosey wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 18:30 +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
> > As I see it, overwriting custom configuration is something that a tool
> > should warn you about, even after the fact. RPM isn't meant to be
> > informative or interactive? Fine! Roll it into a RHN somehow. It's a
> > reasonable feature to ask for. If it weren't reasonable that you might
> > expect automated notification of potential breakages, why did you ever
> > envision a tool that would look for evidence of exactly this situation?
> 
> When the system overwrites a configuration file it often is ok :) It's the 
> times it doesn't that are most likely the scary ones. But not all of them.
> 
> And that's the real problem, how to filter the signal from the noise. 
> Packages need extra metadata for that and it's an afwul lot of manual work 
> if you want to do it correctly.
> 
> If you'd require that extra work from me, I'd drop packaging instantly. 
> And so will many others, I'm sure.

So if I'm reading into this correctly, RPM doesn't care at all whether
the configuration file was changed from the previous original -- it just
overwrites it regardless.

Then my expectations of implementation ease are assuming functionality
that RPM doesn't have, and that's why you're telling me that it would be
difficult to determine when to send notification?

Is that correct?

Ouch. I'm further disappointed by RPM -- I'd assumed it tracked by
modification date, MD5 sum, or SOMEHOW. My assumptions have led me to
improper assumptions.

Thank you for your responses.

Chet