While I was playing with MySQL I realized that most of the problems users can run into are caused by using non-distribution configuration file for MySQL. RPM wouldn’t overwrite original file if user has manually altered it. And it can became source of problems for users. Sometimes it may not be obvious that they should merge thier configuration file with distribution one to fix errors. While I was discussing this with my colleagues, we came to the conclusion that some tool for managing configuration files may be handy. Something what will warn users about possible conflicts, help them solve them and maybe more.
Other distributions already has something like this. In Gentoo there are even two tools for this thing. One is called etc-update and the second one is dispatch-conf. While discussing these tool we also came accross some disadvantages these tools have. Well, in the end, I filled up feature request. So some details can be found there. This blog entry should just attract more attention to this feature.
Other purpose of this blog entry can be to mention some completely unofficial things and dreams. As you may see, I already collected some feedback. And I will try to keep all relevant informations on openfate. So after collecting some opinions, the most important part would be implementation, don’t you think? As probably everybody else, I’ll be happy if somebody will be interested enough to start real project. But I put it on my todo, I’m thinking about it and I’ll try to take a better look on possibilities how to implement such a thing in future (not sure how distant future, got exams in school now). Any new idea is off course welcome and everything I’ll find out will be posted on openfate page.
Last thing, let’s mention link for feature#306411 again. As stated before, all relevant informations will be there.