Stupid end-user tricks: darcs for /etc and /boot

[Morgan Greywolf]

Alexander Skwar wrote:
>> One Gentoo user says that etc-update can 
>> completely hose the system if you are not careful.
>>     
>
> Yes, that was what he wrote. And it's plain wrong. You don't
> accidentally type "-5<enter>". Sure, *could* happen - but in
> the same way, the Ubuntu partition tools make it easy to wipe
> your system, if you're not careful. I mean, you could easily
> do "sudo fdisk /dev/hda<enter>o<enter>w<enter>", couldn't you?
>   
Well, I think you actually oversimplify the issues with etc-update.  It
*is* easy to hose up your system, just not in 5 minutes.

First off, eventually if you don't update those ._cfg000* files your
system *will* be hosed because your configuration files will eventually
not match the software you have installed.

Secondly, sometimes the automerge will seriously break your config
files.  At one point there was a _severe_ bug in automerge.  And there
may have been other times.

Finally, failure to keep those /etc files up-to-date will eventually
break your portage, because the emerge scripts will eventually not be
able ot handle some vary old config files.

I'm a former Gentoo user who loves the system, but in recognizing it's
weak points, I ended up switching to Gentoo