Other uses for tree versioning systems

[Michael Ellerman]

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 02:53 pm, Martin Pool wrote:
> On  9 Jun 2005, Hans Ulrich Niedermann <arch at n-dimensional.de> wrote:
> > Of course, bazaar-ng, arch and other versioning systems track the
> > execute bit, but for a proper software installation, you need more
> > control over the permissions: If you really want to go all the way
> > here, you'll have to store information about ownership, the full 12
> > permission bits, extended attributes, ACLs and even system specific
> > markers such as the SELinux attributes.
>
> This gets pretty complex; it might be installed as user 'bugs' on one
> machine and 'bugzilla' on another, etc.
>
> Possibly for complex cases it's better to have a shell or Python
> script which sets things the right way, and that could be run from
> e.g. a post-update hook.

Although I think it'd be nice for bzr to have some support for this sort of 
stuff (as long as it's not intrusive for people who don't want it), I 
generally think Martin's right and that a post-update script is better.

I implemented a centralised & versioned configuration/code repository a few 
years ago for about 90 AIX & Linux machines. I originally intended for 
permissions to "just work" but quickly moved to having pre/post install 
scripts.

Not only are there permission issues but for most non-trivial systems you need 
to start/stop services, check preconditions etc. so you need some scripting 
around it anyway.

Just food for thought.

cheers

-- 
Michael Ellerman
IBM OzLabs

email: michael:ellerman.id.au
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wwweb: http://michael.ellerman.id.au
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We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors,
we borrow it from our children. - S.M.A.R.T Person
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