Ryan Schmidt wrote:
The ticket mentions the need to have install/uninstall scripts (i.e. not do it in activate/deactivate since that only works with images), and that functionality is needed in order for the *.sample approach to be useful. It's another old ticket, though: http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/ticket/1068
I don't see how #1068 is related to Brian's request. Don't see why install/uninstall scripts are necessary for anything.
Necessary and necessary... They are a convenience for users, so that you don't have to do anything extra in order to use the default configuration ? Maybe this concrete configuration example from FreeBSD's Ports helps: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/plist-config.html
For the configuration files, it would be a great benefit to the packaging targets if there was a way to specify which ones are conffiles. Probably something like "destroot.conffiles", similar to the existing "destroot.keepdirs". This would signify that the files in question are *not* to be overwritten...
Don't see why that's necessary. I think we're doing just fine with individual portfiles installing their sample conf files with *.sample or *.default names.
It is great when not installing (port install), such as when using the binary packages... For instance both RPM and DEB have built-in facilities for handling configs when upgrading.
So all these Tickets are related (#777 is another one), and the implementation of these missing features should be taken to the macports-dev list. So to me, it seems that at least two new pieces of functionality are needed to be added to the MacPorts base in order to support this ?
#777 seems to be a "nice to have" rather than a requirement:
http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/ticket/777
"If a port installs a foo.cf.sample it might want to copy foo.cf.sample to foo.cf iff foo.cf doesn't exist. This is probably common enough that the port author shouldn't be forced to write an on-install foo.cf.sample [ ! -f foo.cf ] && cp foo.cf.sample foo.cf"
I don't understand what functionality requested by Brian cannot be met by MacPorts 1.5.2 as it is today.
It's an enhancement alright, but I think that it would fit in great with the need of packages to signify which files are configuration ? In essence doing "port install/uninstall" and binary archives/packages have different needs, but I think it would be great to have features for both of them. And I do prefer simply listing the conffiles, rather than having to write any such install/uninstall scripts manually. --anders