[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Configuration file versioning

[Stefan Monnier]

> you folks who use tla for tracking /etc; how do you handle the /etc dirs
> of  multiple machines, parts of which are the same, parts of which
> are different?

Good question.
Last time I did something like it, I used a mix of:
- don't revision-control all files (e.g. maybe exim.conf would not be under
  Arch's control, so they can be different on each machine).
- try to make the files identical using conditional statements in the config
  files.  Of course only works if the file's syntax offers
  conditional statements.
- if all else fails, use a pre-processor to do the conditionalizing
  (typically I'd edit exim.conf.m4 and then have a /etc/Makefile rule which
  builds exim.conf out of it).

But maybe you can get more direct support from Arch.  E.g. have one main
shared branch plus one local branch per machine.  When committing a change,
you can tell Arch to which branch to commit, so it should be possible to get
it work fairly well.


        Stefan