etckeeper should offer daily autocommits

[Thierry Carrez]

Binary package hint: etckeeper

etckeeper already autocommits pre/post package installation modifications. It could also offer a daily cronjob to catch uncommitted modifications every night. This would allow much better default tracking.

This should be optional, though I would argue it should be "on" by default if we want one day to include etckeeper by default on server installs (users would get a usable change history without manually committing even once).

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

Jelmer/Daniel: could you please comment on that proposal (especially the "on by default" part) ? If you ACK it, I'll upload it.

[Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer)]

On Wed, 2009-01-28 at 12:59 +0000, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Jelmer/Daniel: could you please comment on that proposal (especially
> the "on by default" part) ? If you ACK it, I'll upload it.
The code seems reasonable to me, except that I think the setting in
 etckeeper.conf should be lower in the file (below or above
 AVOID_COMMIT_BEFORE_INSTALL).

As to enabling this by default; I'm not sure. Personally I would always
disable this, in case e.g. it does a commit while I'm trying to
configure something or if I temporarily disabled something - but I think
it may be different for the average sysadmin. It would be a good
candidate for a debconf question.

Cheers,

Jelmer
--
Jelmer Vernooij <email address hidden> - http://samba.org/~jelmer/
Jabber: <email address hidden>

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

I put it just under the VCS choice in etckeeper.conf because I thought it would be a more commonly changed setting than the commit options. However the commit options are related to VCS so it makes sense to keep them grouped... Will fix.

About enabling the cronjob by default... you are right in assuming it depends on targeted audience. I want etckeeper to be one day active by default on server installs. I want people that don't even know it's there to discover a usable history of what configuration changes were applied to the system. It's in the same spirit as the pre-install autocommit : any package installation will also commit changes for you that you may prefer to consider a temporary change. that's why I would handle them in the same way, on by default with an AVOID_ option in etckeeper.conf.

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

Included in 0.29, will merge.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package etckeeper - 0.30ubuntu1

---------------
etckeeper (0.30ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Merge from debian unstable, remaining changes:
    - etckeeper.conf, debian/control: default to bzr
  * Introduces daily autocommits (LP: #321409)

etckeeper (0.30) unstable; urgency=low

  * Add vim .*.sw? files to default ignores.
  * Also add emacs #*# autosave files to default ignores.
  * And DEADJOE files, for good measure.
  * etckeeper update-ignore will automatically update the VCS ignore
    file, only touching the part inside a "# managed by etckeeper"
    comment block. (You may want to add such a comment block to your existing
    .gitignore, or delete the file and regenerate it.)
  * Run etckeeper update-ignore on upgrade.
  * Fix handling of -d in recursive calls to etckeeper

etckeeper (0.29) unstable; urgency=low

  * Add a daily cron job to autocommit changes to /etc. Closes: #515100
    The cron job is enabled by default but can be disabled
    via etckeeper.conf.
    (Thanks to Thierry Carrez)
  * Fix executable bits on two darcs support scripts.

 -- Thierry Carrez <email address hidden> Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:49:20 +0000