Updating macports.conf

[Rainer Müller]

Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
>> 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.

Ok, the file would not necessarily be called like this. It could also go 
into share/doc/macports or anywhere else. And yes, the merging is the 
big disadvantage of this approach.

> 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).

This sounds like a good solution. Although it does not make the 
documentation lines visible to the user.

Rainer