Re: recommendations for version controlling /etc on a new f12 box?

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On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 13:20 -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote: 
> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> >   i'm about to install f12 fresh on a new laptop and i thought it
> > would be fun to version control all of /etc since that's where all the
> > fun happens.  anyone doing that?  recommendations?  a quick google
> > found this:
> > 
> > http://aymanh.com/version-control-linux-configuration-files-etc-etckeeper
> > 
> > i'm just curious if there's a strategy that's clearly superior to the
> > rest, or if this sort of thing is even worth it.
> > 
> I'm a great believer in RCS for this:
> - all on the machine, no need to set up servers

True of Subversion if you only want it for the local machine.

> - easy to roll back if needed

True of Subversion.

> - easy to embed version, date, etc, in comments
>    to be sure you have what you think you do.

True of Subversion.  In fact, it uses basically the same mechanism.

> - right capability where multiple admins are not changing
>    things all the time. Or at least the same things.

True enough, distributed development environments offer more, but you
don't need to use it.  And with Subversion, if you don't use it, you
don't need to set it up (at least where "it" refers to a server).

> - if you use the comments capability, leaves a good audit trail.

Subversion doesn't have the capability to log all commit comments in the
checked-out file, but I find that enough of that makes the file itself
pretty cumbersome.  You can always go back to the repository to see the
comments.  And there are some decent GUI tools that make repository
browsing relatively pleasant.  I don't know if the same can be said for
RCS.

> 
> Tools intended to solve multi-user development are more complex than they need 
> to be. CVS, git, yady, yada, yada.

I don't recall if CVS required a server.  CVS is basically a front end
on RCS to support distributed development, so for a single user, RCS is
simpler.

I know next to nothing about git.  I used to use RCS long ago, but I use
Subversion for another project, so using it in this context would save
me learning another tool.  And I like the Subversion repository
conceptual model better than CVS, although for this sort of routine,
single-user situation, I don't think it matters much.

[I don't want this to degenerate into a religious war (c.f. vi vs.
emacs).  Just sharing ideas...]

-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
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