Your understanding is correct, but as I mentioned, this only changes the
already-easy case: the package manager can update unmodified config files
with your mechanism, or with a number of other mechanisms (e.g. keeping
checksums of the files, or, for an update, comparing the old package’s
config with the new package’s config while both are around).
The tricky bit is doing something about modified config files. And once
you’re handling modified config files, you also handle unmodified config
files automatically :)
On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 7:24 AM Mark Trompell <m__t@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 28. August 2019 um 22:04 Uhr
Von: "Michael Stapelberg" <michael+distri@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
An: distri@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Betreff: [distri] Re: Etc
Thanks for sharing this idea.
Conceptually, this would certainly be possible, though I would probably
use a single distri exchange directory as lowerdir based on my
experience with managing overlayfs programmatically at system runtime.
What is the envisioned benefit in workflow, though? The only change I
see is that unmodified config files would be updated to new versions,
but there is no change in the more tricky case of modified config
files, right?
As I said I'm not that familiar with overlayfs yet. At the time I might
have needed it for foresightlinux it wasn't ready upstream, so I don't
know yet what actually is possible.
My idea on this was, that you can have the etc files updated and in the
right place, but if a user changed anything his version would always
overlay the
original version.
While this seems like a good incremental benefit, distri
tries to push boundaries. Currently, my philosophy regarding config
files is that programs are responsible to make happen any recommended
(or even required) config changes between updates. For example, when
moving from major version 3 to 4, the i3 window manager transparently
converted old configs to the new format when loading, and users could
change the actual file contents at their own pace.
On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 6:51 PM
Mark Trompell <m__t@xxxxxxxxx[mailto:m__t@xxxxxxxxx]> wrote:
Hi, just one thought, would it be possible and make sense,
instead of copying /etc to mount all etc directories as lowerdir and a
initially enoty but writable one as upperdir with overlayfs. That way
people could just edit the files in /etc without touching the original
files. Not sure if that would be possible or feasible at all though
yet.
Regards Mark
