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Re: bookworm upgrade report: boring



* On 2023 12 Jun 07:51 -0500, Celejar wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Jun 2023 12:31:31 -0400
> Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:
> > Everything's working. In the end, I didn't make any config
> > changes (left everything as "keep current config").
> 
> This is the part that always stresses me out; I often have changes in
> the default config files that I don't want to lose, but I'm also
> worried about not getting the latest versions of the config files. I
> usually try to accept the new files and manually bring in any important
> changes I've made to the old ones, but this takes time and patience to
> do right, and things can break if not done right :)

I've been experimenting with Arch Linux for some time and one thing I
like about its pacman package management system is that it has a tool
available named 'pacdiff'.  The details are off topic but in a nutshell
what it does is identify a locally modified config and the corresponding
new config files and can open them in 'vimdiff' giving a nice display of
the diff using the vim editor.  Once the editing is complete there is a
final step to discard the new config file or replace the current one
with it.  I do like that Debian retains the new file with various file
name extensions for future reference.

I know that apt allows for viewing a unified diff of the files, but it
has been quite some time since I've been presented with that menu that I
don't recall if editing based on the diff is an option.  It certainly
seems that calling vimdiff in that situation would be quite easy but I
realize that not many are comfortable with vim and would want a more
universal editor that I might not like.

Typically, if it appears that there are major changes to a config file
then I will install the maintainer's version, note it, and edit it for
needed local changes later.  I've been bitten by keeping all of my local
configs in the past so I don't do that any more.

- Nate

-- 
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
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