From: Maarten t. H. <ma...@tr...> - 2003-06-21 13:17:34
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On Saturday 21 June 2003 11:31, Manuel Bilderbeek wrote: > Maarten ter Huurne wrote: > > If the global settings file is made by the system administrator, then why > > should we overwrite it? > > The administrator can be expected to read the documentation before > upgrading: he can know the file will be overwritten. (If we put that in > the docs.) Just because something is documented, doesn't mean it's right. It is very unconventional to overwrite hand-edited configuration files, so there will be admins that overlook this point. The admin should read the release notes on an upgrade, but I don't think you can expect him to read the entire manual before every upgrade. Also, I don't see any advantage to overwriting the global settings file, while there are clearly drawbacks. > Besides, suppose he uses a package manager: at least in Debian, you are > prompted what to do when a configuration file in the package differs > from the one already installed. You can choose to keep the old version, > overwrite it, check the diff, etc. If a package manager supports that, the packager is free to modify the installation procedure to take advantage of that feature. But we also have a "make install", which should behave in a predictable way. Bye, Maarten |