On Feb 15, 2008, at 22:26, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
On Feb 15, 2008, at 6:01 PM, Rainer Müller wrote:
Currently on selfupdate macports.conf is not updated in any way if it already existed. This "hides" new options from long time users.
Yep. Very common problem with configuration files!
An up-to-date macports.conf provides a good overview over all options and contains short documentation lines. [ ... ] 1) Add macports.conf.dist
Yes, at a minimum, you need an updated reference config file available at all times, though I dislike the .dist approach. If it's just a passive reference, then you need to either write a merge utility (like FreeBSD's "mergemaster") or dump the entire problem of merging in the user's lap, neither solution bringing much happiness. A better approach is FreeBSD's /etc/defaults - a set of shadow files you keep up to date, making the primary configuration file an override. You can still get stale data lingering in the user configuration file, keeping an option on or off when the default has changed, but sometimes that's a feature.
This is, in any case, how I'd handle this one. Always install a macports.conf.default and add some logic to load the two in order (macports.conf should, in fact, be optional).
Great, and after we solve this, we'll do the same for all the software one could install using MacPorts, right? :-D