Updating configuration files

[Barry Warsaw]

There's one thing I miss from my days running Gentoo, and no, it's not the
unholy number of hours it takes to upgrade due to recompiles. :)

When a system configuration file gets updated, emerge gives you a richer set
of options for dealing with changes.  I'm reminded of this with the just
upgraded ntp package, which modifies /etc/ntp.conf.

Debian/Ubuntu gives you the option to:

* Keep your version
* Install the new maintainers version
* See the diff
* Drop into a shell to "deal with" the situation

I think these are insufficient.  What I really want to do is merge my local
changes with the new package version, and I'd like the tool to help me do it.

emerge gives me several other options.  It's been ages since I ran Gentoo so I
don't remember all the details, but one other option was extremely helpful:

* Interactively merge local changes with the new version of the config file

What this did was allow me to iterate through all the diff chunks
interactively.  For each chunk, I could select which version I wanted (my old
local version, or the new package version).  I could also edit the chunk in
case I wanted a little bit of both.  Once I quit the editor, that chunk would
be installed into the config file, and then the next chunk would come up for
review.

While it wasn't always easy to resolve the differences, it *usually* wasn't
hard and it was almost always extremely valuable.

Has anybody thought about porting this nice behavior to Debian/Ubuntu?

FWIW, etckeeper makes it not terribly difficult to simply select the new
package version and then manually go back and compare revisions to
re-establish your local changes.  But it's still not as convenient.

-Barry
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