Subject: Re: setup gdb && setup binutils problem.
From: James Dumser <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 12:04:16 -0500

On Wed, 21 Jun 2000 08:05:51 -0700 (PDT), Earnie Boyd wrote:
> First, my /usr/info/dir file was overwritten.  The new file of course
> only had binutils. :(.  Suggestion for future package releases is to
> remove the /usr/info/dir file if it exists before creating the
> tarball.

Agreed. Any file that is not specific to a given package (only) should
not be included in the package tarball. Unless/until setup is smart
enough to modify existing files in such instances (or it can execute
post-install commands like "build dir"), these files should be renamed
to something like dir.add or dir.binutils and referenced from the
README.

> Second, although this should have been expected, I forgot this and I
> would like to warn others that my customized cygwin.bat file was
> overwritten with the standard one.  Question, should a package update
> install a new cygwin.bat file?  IMO, it probably shouldn't.  Anyway,
> if you have customized your cygwin.bat file, you should copy/rename it
> and use the copied/renamed one instead.

Also agreed. Configuration files and files that are routinely customized
should not be in the package tarball. Example files are fine -- named
something like /etc/inetd.conf.example or .template and referenced from
the README.

Usually, when I update cygwin, I run setup -u without specifying any
specific packages (I might have missed or forgot about some update).
Once started (without killing setup), it's too late to see that
inetutils has also been updated and is now possibly overwriting my
tailored inetd.conf file. Even if I purposely was updating inetutils,
without downloading the tarball manually and inspecting it -- or relying
on the announcement message to list any files that I might have
customized -- I have to determine where all the customized files are on
my own and make backup copies of them so I can recover after the
install.

With the example of cygwin.bat, you can easily make a shortcut to
my-cygwin.bat and just ignore the distributed cygwin.bat; but most
packages have hard-coded filenames for configuration files so you can't
just "use the copied/renamed one instead."

-- 
James Dumser  [email-masked]

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