Updating macports.conf

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 15, 2008, at 22:26, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

> On Feb 15, 2008, at 6:01 PM, Rainer Müller wrote:
>
>> Currently on selfupdate macports.conf is not updated in any way if it
>> already existed. This "hides" new options from long time users.
>
> Yep.  Very common problem with configuration files!
>
>> An up-to-date macports.conf provides a good overview over all options
>> and contains short documentation lines.
>> [ ... ]
>> 1) Add macports.conf.dist
>
> Yes, at a minimum, you need an updated reference config file available
> at all times, though I dislike the .dist approach.  If it's just a
> passive reference, then you need to either write a merge utility (like
> FreeBSD's "mergemaster") or dump the entire problem of merging in the
> user's lap, neither solution bringing much happiness.  A better
> approach is FreeBSD's /etc/defaults - a set of shadow files you keep
> up to date, making the primary configuration file an override.   You
> can still get stale data lingering in the user configuration file,
> keeping an option on or off when the default has changed, but
> sometimes that's a feature.
>
> This is, in any case, how I'd handle this one.  Always install a
> macports.conf.default and add some logic to load the two in order
> (macports.conf should, in fact, be optional).

Great, and after we solve this, we'll do the same for all the  
software one could install using MacPorts, right? :-D