Debian Bug report logs - #120152
[CONFFILE] dpkg: Merge changes to conffiles in with sdiff(1)

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: dpkg: Merge changes to config files in with sdiff(1)

Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 11:53:52 +1100

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.9.18
Severity: wishlist

One of the things that happens on a semi-regular basis on my machine is
that I update packages and a new version of /etc/services is available.

I have a couple of local service definitions in this file, so it's been
modified from the shipped version.

At this point I get the dpkg question about what to do -- overwrite with
the new file, keep the current one or show the differences.


It would be really nice to have an additional option, to use sdiff(1) to
merge the changes or, better, something that would function like
merge(1) and allowed editing if conflicts were detected.

        Daniel


-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Kernel Version: Linux inanna 2.4.15-pre5 #1 Sat Nov 17 01:38:23 EST 2001 i686 unknown

Versions of the packages dpkg depends on:
ii  libc6          2.2.4-6        GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone
ii  libncurses5    5.2.20010318-3 Shared libraries for terminal handling
ii  libstdc++2.10- 2.95.4-0.01100 The GNU stdc++ library

Message #16 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jarno Elonen <elonen@iki.fi>

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Patch: sdiff support

Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 19:05:04 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

tag 120152 + patch
thanks,

Here's a patch that implements support for sdiff, or more generally "manual 
merge" (and actually fixes a few other bugs while doing so). Proposed 
changelog entries:

 * Added a 'Merge' option (Closes: #189805, #48717, #120152)
 * Enclosed file names with quotes in command string (Closes #147583)
 * Added a message with the path of the new conffile in Suspend
 * Ignore SIGINT while waiting for child processes so that dpkg
   doesn't die if the child is ctrl-c'd

The patch adds a new 'M' option to the conflict prompt whenever environment 
variable 'MERGE2' is set or '/usr/bin/merge2' exists.

To make merging a bit more comfortable, I've also written a fullscreen ncurses 
based drop-in replacement for sdiff (not in Main yet: 
http://elonen.iki.fi/code/imediff/). It registers itself as a 'merge2' 
alternative through 'update-alternatives', thus the '/usr/bin/merge2' check 
in the dpkg patch. I hope sdiff maintainer will agree with me to register 
sdiff also and I'm furthermore considering writing an sdiff compatibility 
wrapper around 'kompare'.

- Jarno

[dpkg-merge.patch.bz2 (application/x-bzip2, attachment)]

Message #23 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Josip Rodin <joy@srce.hr>

To: Jarno Elonen <elonen@iki.fi>, 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Patch: sdiff support

Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 20:52:52 +0100

On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 07:05:04PM +0200, Jarno Elonen wrote:
>  * Enclosed file names with quotes in command string (Closes #147583)

Umm...

@@ -450,7 +450,7 @@
                if (!p || !*p)
                        p=DEFAULTPAGER;

-               sprintf(cmdbuf, DIFF " -Nu %.250s %.250s | %.250s", old, new, p);
+               sprintf(cmdbuf, DIFF " -N \"%.250s\" \"%.250s\" | %.250s", old, new, p);

                s=getenv(SHELLENV);
                if (!s || !*s)

It would help if you were more carefully reading your patch...

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.

Message #28 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jarno Elonen <elonen@iki.fi>

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Patch: sdiff support

Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 01:17:37 +0200

> -  sprintf(cmdbuf, DIFF " -Nu %.250s %.250s | %.250s", old, new, p);
> +  sprintf(cmdbuf, DIFF " -N \"%.250s\" \"%.250s\" | %.250s", old, new, p);

Ouch, sorry about that.

What do you about 2-way merge otherwise, however? Would it be a better idea to 
skip it altogether, start storing the original conffiles and implement 3-way 
instead?

Personally, I not sure anymore if it would really be worth it - you would 
still have to check each hunk manually because even a non-conflicting 
automatic merge can quite easily break the semantics of a configuration file. 
For example, adding a path field in the middle of a file could work fine with 
the defaults but might unintentionally override the values a user had 
specified earlier on the first line.

- Jarno

Message #33 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>

To: Josip Rodin <joy@srce.hr>, 120152@bugs.debian.org

Cc: Jarno Elonen <elonen@iki.fi>, 147583@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Patch: sdiff support

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:32:32 -0600

On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 08:52:52PM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 07:05:04PM +0200, Jarno Elonen wrote:
> >  * Enclosed file names with quotes in command string (Closes #147583)
> 
> Umm...
> 
> @@ -450,7 +450,7 @@
>                 if (!p || !*p)
>                         p=DEFAULTPAGER;
> 
> -               sprintf(cmdbuf, DIFF " -Nu %.250s %.250s | %.250s", old, new, p);
> +               sprintf(cmdbuf, DIFF " -N \"%.250s\" \"%.250s\" | %.250s", old, new, p);
> 
>                 s=getenv(SHELLENV);
>                 if (!s || !*s)

That looks like a bad idea anyway; what if the filename contains ", $,
or `?

In general adding more levels of quotation is the wrong way to fix this
kind of bug, as you can never win. Instead, forget about the quotes and
simply backslash-escape non-word characters. The algorithm described in
'perldoc -f quotemeta' will do the job.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]

Message #38 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Adam Heath <doogie@debian.org>

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Cc: Jarno Elonen <elonen@iki.fi>

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Patch: sdiff support

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 10:57:23 -0600 (CST)

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, Josip Rodin wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 07:05:04PM +0200, Jarno Elonen wrote:
> >  * Enclosed file names with quotes in command string (Closes #147583)
>
> Umm...
>
> @@ -450,7 +450,7 @@
>                 if (!p || !*p)
>                         p=DEFAULTPAGER;
>
> -               sprintf(cmdbuf, DIFF " -Nu %.250s %.250s | %.250s", old, new, p);
> +               sprintf(cmdbuf, DIFF " -N \"%.250s\" \"%.250s\" | %.250s", old, new, p);
>
>                 s=getenv(SHELLENV);
>                 if (!s || !*s)

Note, that this kind of execing of external programs will no longer be
nescessary for the new dpkg.  It doesn't use the shell to run things, so there
are no quoting problems.

Message #43 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jarno Elonen <elonen@iki.fi>

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Cc: 147583@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Patch: sdiff support

Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 00:28:52 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Ok, here's a new merge2 patch that replaces the previous one. It now escapes 
the file names as Colin noted. I've tested it with a conffile that contained 
both spaces and double quotes.

- Jarno

BTW: Is the new dpkg publicly available for a sneak peek yet, and where?

[dpkg-merge-2.patch.bz2 (application/x-bzip2, attachment)]

Message #56 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jarno Elonen <elonen@debian.org>

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Unofficial patched version available

Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 18:15:42 +0200

A note for those who would like to use merging already:
I'm maintaining an unofficial branch of Dpkg that is otherwise identical to 
the main one except that it's has (update version of the) patch of bug 
#120152 applied:

  http://elonen.iki.fi/code/unofficial-debs/dpkg-merge/

Install package 'Imediff2' or do 'export MERGE2=/usr/bin/sdiff' to enable the 
functionality.

- Jarno

Message #61 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>

To: Jarno Elonen <elonen@debian.org>, 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Unofficial patched version available

Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 16:35:27 +0000

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Sat, 2004-11-20 at 18:15 +0200, Jarno Elonen wrote:

> A note for those who would like to use merging already:
> I'm maintaining an unofficial branch of Dpkg that is otherwise identical to 
> the main one except that it's has (update version of the) patch of bug 
> #120152 applied:
> 
In Arch?  If so it'd be great if you could also publish your repository
details.

Thanks,

Scott
-- 
Have you ever, ever felt like this?
Had strange things happen?  Are you going round the twist?

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #66 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jarno Elonen <elonen@debian.org>

To: Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>

Cc: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Unofficial patched version available

Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 18:55:34 +0200

> In Arch?  If so it'd be great if you could also publish your repository
> details.

I'm not sure what information you are asking exactly, but here's some:

The binaries are (unfortunately) for i386 only and the apt lines for the 
repository are:

 deb http://elonen.iki.fi/code/unofficial-debs/ ./
 deb-src http://elonen.iki.fi/code/unofficial-debs/ ./ 

List of all the packages in my repository (not just dpkg) is available at
http://elonen.iki.fi/code/unofficial-debs/


The updated patch used for building the binary is always at
http://elonen.iki.fi/code/unofficial-debs/dpkg-merge/dpkg-merge.patch
and it's architecture independent.

The build process is not automatic so the version may not always be in synch 
with 'main'.

- Jarno

Message #71 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>

To: Jarno Elonen <elonen@debian.org>

Cc: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Unofficial patched version available

Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 17:06:50 +0000

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Sat, 2004-11-20 at 18:55 +0200, Jarno Elonen wrote:

> > In Arch?  If so it'd be great if you could also publish your repository
> > details.
> 
> I'm not sure what information you are asking exactly,
> 
When you said you were maintaining an offical branch of dpkg, I assumed
you had actually created a Branch of the Arch repository the code is in.

There's one for the selinux-support, for example.

Scott
-- 
Have you ever, ever felt like this?
Had strange things happen?  Are you going round the twist?

[signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #76 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jarno Elonen <elonen@debian.org>

To: Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>

Cc: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#120152: Unofficial patched version available

Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 19:18:03 +0200

> When you said you were maintaining an offical branch of dpkg, I assumed
> you had actually created a Branch of the Arch repository the code is in.

Oh, I see. No, it's just a "conceptual" branch: a single patch file against 
which I build unofficial versions when a new Dpkg version is released. 
Nothing more. Sorry for being unclear.

- Jarno

Message #87 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: elonen@debian.org

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Patch against 1.13.10

Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 19:12:05 +0300

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Here's the up-to-date patch I promised to attach.

To test it, install Imediff2 (or install sdiff and
export MERGE2=sdiff) and then update some package with
modified conffile(s).

If you don't have one handy and/or don't want to mess up
any real packages' configs, you could try my
dummy test package available at

 http://elonen.iki.fi/code/unofficial-debs/dpkg-merge/merge-test-package.tgz

- Jarno

[dpkg-merge.1.13.10.patch (text/plain, attachment)]

Message #92 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jarno Elonen <elonen@debian.org>

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Still valid

Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 12:37:21 +0300

Hi,

The yearly reminder: the patch is still valid. :)

Could someone please take the time to check it out? The patch is not really 
that complex and the feature makes upgrading much easier if you have local 
changes to conffiles.

 http://elonen.iki.fi/code/unofficial-debs/dpkg-merge/dpkg-merge.1.13.10.patch

- Jarno

Message #105 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: "Johan Walles" <johan.walles@gmail.com>

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Why isn't this patch being merged?

Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:52:23 +0200

Hi!

Why isn't this patch being merged?  I'm not saying it should, but
considering it has about ten dups, at least getting an explanation
about why it shouldn't be would be interesting.

I have been searching the net for that explanation but I couldn't find any.

  Regards //Johan

Message #110 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: "Johan Walles" <johan.walles@gmail.com>

To: 120152@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Fwd: Why isn't the merge patch being merged?

Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:39:28 +0200

Got this reply on the mailing list in case anybody else wants to know.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Raphael Hertzog
Date: 2007-okt-23 18:32

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Johan Walles wrote:
> Bug 120152 (include a "merge" option when dpkg finds modded conf
> files) has nine duplicates and (at least) one patch.
>
> What's stopping the patch from being merged?

Lack of review mainly.

We have many patches lying in the BTS but many of them are old and
probably don't apply anymore and need to be refreshed and discussed.

Maybe this one is different, but then it's one out of many and until
someone does the work to apply it, test it, it will continue lying
here.

The dpkg team is quite small compared to the task represented by the
hundreds of bug reports. So the time of the main committers is limited and
they can't review all bugs.

Message #115 received at 120152@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: "Johan Walles" <johan.walles@gmail.com>

To: "Raphael Hertzog" <hertzog@debian.org>, debian-dpkg@lists.debian.org, 120152@bugs.debian.org

Cc: elonen@debian.org

Subject: Re: Why isn't the merge patch being merged?

Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:21:46 +0100

Raphael, since you say that Jarno's current patch applies fine to the
current version of dpkg, would it be possible for you to merge it?

While waiting for somebody to implement a three way merge, I'd much
prefer a two way merge (Jarno's patch) to nothing (which is what we
have now).

Please merge the patch?

  Regards //Johan

2007/10/24, Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>:
> On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Johan Walles wrote:
> > > We have many patches lying in the BTS but many of them are old and
> > > probably don't apply anymore and need to be refreshed and discussed.
> >
> > This one seems actively maintained; for a couple of years now the
> > author has been packaging his own patched dpkg (currently at 1.14.5):
> >
> > http://elonen.iki.fi/code/unofficial-debs/dpkg-merge/
>
> I saw this somewhat later on, after I finished my reply. Except for a file
> rename (man/C/dpkg.1 -> man/dpkg.1), the patch applied fine to the current
> version.
>
> On the other hand, it might be that a 2-way merge is not what we're
> looking for. It's certainly better than nothing but OTOH it would be 2
> times better if we could have 3-way merge so that we can even add a new
> option --force-confmerge that tries automatically a 3-way merge and that
> falls back to the usual behaviour --force-conf{new,old,def} if the merge
> process failed.
>
> But it requires more extensive changes as we need to keep a copy of the
> conffiles as shippped by the previous version of the package.
>
> Jarno, would you be interested to work on that?
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Raphaël Hertzog
>
> Premier livre français sur Debian GNU/Linux :
> http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
>

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