TurnKey Linux's take on Ubuntu appliance development: KISS

[John McCabe-Dansted]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 10:47 PM, Soren Hansen <soren at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> If a package upgrade includes a change to a conffile (a configuration
> file managed by dpkg) compared to the version installed by the old
> version of the package, and you have made changes to said conffile, you
> will be prompted about these changes. If, however, something else (e.g.
> webmin) has made these changes on your behalf, you will be prompted
> about changes you have not made to a conffile you likely have never
> heard of. I'm just saying that this is not acceptable, which is a major

In principle it seems trivial for webmin etc. to keep a log of what it
changes and why, and add hooks for these changes to be automatically
reapplied upon update. This would seem vastly better than the current
situation where the whole upgrade process stops in the middle to wait
for user input if a config file has been changed. It'd be nice if we
could just leave an upgrade running overnight and have a fully
functional system when we wake up in the morning. It'd also be nice to
be able to take the log of all changes made to the system, edit it,
and then replay it on another freshly installed system. IMHO all
changes should be done by some "automated system", even if it is just
a script that does
   cp ; vi ; diff ; sudo patch

-- 
John C. McCabe-Dansted