[Kolab-devel] Autofoo Proposal

[Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)]

Gunnar Wrobel wrote:
> This embeds the configuration firmly into the RPM when building the  
> package and means that you need to rebuild once a specific path  
> changed. This is okay for the OpenPKG situation but usually more  
> difficult on a native installation.
> 

Actually, the rebuilding of a RPM package because of configuration changes in 
files provided through an RPM, at least on the consuming side, is completely 
unnecessary, provided the packaging is done properly.

On the provider side though, configuration changes should not end up in a 
stable stream of the product <insert-something-about-pragmatic-source-code-
management-here />.

Having said that, again provided the RPM packaging is done properly, RPM even 
allows configuration updates provided through package updates to be merged in 
with an existing, changed configuration file (provided the merge can be 
performed automatically -e.g. no merge conflicts or fuzziness- and this is 
opt-in at the discretion of the consumer).

In any case, either such a merge is performed, or .rpmnew files show up on the 
filesystem. Conditional reloads/restarts are performed if necessary, and 
configured in the package.

Luckily, Christoph Wickert and myself are packaging gurus in Fedora (including 
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux[1]).

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

-- 
Jeroen van Meeuwen
Senior Engineer, Kolab Systems AG

e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
t: +316 42 801 403
w: http://www.kolabsys.com

pgp: 9342 BF08