Handling of configuration conflicts during upgrade (was: Re: [10.04 64bit])

[Etienne Goyer]

On 11-04-18 01:27 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
> The issue is that you have changed these files from the defaults. The
> package maintainers may have made a change to the way the package works
> that is incompatible with your changes, so its important to see those
> differences and *decide* whether to keep your config file or merge their
> changes into it (or just take theirs).

A bit off-topic, but this is a recurring problem when upgrading, and
it's only worst when doing LTS-to-LTS upgrade (since there's a lot more
default configuration changes).  It makes automatic non-interactive
upgrade challenging in certain situation.

I see two things that could help that:

1. Having a tool that check ahead of time for these conflicts.  That
way, you can plan the upgrade accordingly.

2. The ability to specify --force-confdef and --force-confnew on a
per-package basis (so that you can get the maintainer's version for some
packages, and keep your local changes for others).


Thoughts?  (surely this is not the right place to discuss that, though)


-- 
Etienne Goyer
Technical Account Manager - Canonical Ltd
Ubuntu Certified Instructor   -    LPIC-3

 ~= Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings =~