I've already submitted two suggestions today, so I'll make this one short: /etc/skel is an example of a default configuration that might be copied for individual users. But when I run etc-update to update /etc/skel/.bashrc (for example) each user has to figure out that it's updated and manually update ~/.bashrc. It would be a terrible hack to symlink individual users' configs to global defaults. Would it be feasable to automate the proccess of updating user configs from updated global defaults?
if ~/.bashrc had 'source /etc/skel/.bashrc' then any global changes would be included in users configs and this allows the users to tweak their own configs.
Ok, then, bashrc was a poor example. What about fluxbox config? Or any config, for that matter, that works on a per-user basis, storing text files in the user's home dir?
This is an awesome idea! If all the config files were inherreting value-key pairs, we might be able to have an even smarter management of the system. However, some configs do not lend themselves to value + keys naturally.. but, anyway, it would be really nice to have a centralized system for storing user data, without having 100's of .blah directories in the home dir... oh.. I think that's called the registry in windows... anyway, etc-update for userdirs would be awesome... and it's a step in the right direction..
Beyond the scope of etc-update (this is about local site policies).
