Privoxy

It would be nice if Privoxy's configuration files were set up to work
better with RPM updates.

I use Privoxy on Fedora Linux, via the RPM that Fedora ships. I configure
Privoxy by manually editing the files in /etc/privoxy, specifically,
/etc/privoxy/config (to add forward-socks4a lines) and
/etc/privoxy/user.action. However each time Fedora makes available an
updated Privoxy RPM that provides a more up-to-date version of these files,
the RPM manager notices that I have changed these files. Since it can't
automatically merge the changes I've made to those files into the new
versions of the files, it creates a .rpmnew file with the new default
version of those files from the new RPM. So, it's up to me to do a manual
merge after each RPM update.

It would be nice if Privoxy were set up to avoid this dance every time I
update the Privoxy RPM. One possibility would be to set aside a special
filename (e.g., /etc/privoxy/local) that is not provided by the default
Privoxy installation, and have Privoxy look in that file for configuration
options, so that users could put site-specific configuration options there.
Since new Privoxy RPMs would not provide that file, and the Privoxy
configuration defaults would be separated from site-specific information,
no .rpmnew files would be created and all would work nicely. Another
variant on this would be to set aside a directory (e.g., /etc/privoxy.d)
and have Privoxy read every file found in that directory for configuration
information. Then the Privoxy default install could put various config
files in there, and users could add additional files with site-specific
options.