I think etc-update is a great tool, I just think there were some minor oversights: 1) Support of app-misc/colordiff I think that be default, colordiff should be used by etc-update as there are few who this would cause problems for. I suppose you could have a nocolor use flag for them. I cant imagine a situation where one would want this, but I guess someone might object. 2) Only list the original file names, not the new ones. That would make it easier to visually group files based on their directory. For example, I almost never have etc-update do anything to the files update files in /etc/conf.d/ while I almost always leave the files in /etc/init.d/ for -5 autoupdating at the end 3) Modifying the description for -3 and -5 My suggestions: -3: Use newer files prompting before replacing each older file -5: Replace all older files with the newer ones without prompting. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
1 /etc/dispatch-conf.conf controls what happens.
Created attachment 68415 [details] Addresses the 3rd point I think the decision to use colordiff as default would have to be made by someone higher up in development. According to the colordiff webpage [1], Debian has moved to colordiff by default. However, it is possible to change this line: diff_command="diff -uN %file1 %file2" to diff_command="colordiff -uN %file1 %file2" (or vimdiff, or whateverelse). Restating the -3 and -5 options is a very good idea. It's confusing for the beginner and ambiguous for the experienced user. Attached is an etc-update script with the suggested changes. I didn't have time to troubleshoot the version with the changes about listing only one name. But, I'll submit an updated version the next time I emerge. [1] http://colordiff.sourceforge.net/
1) you can use colordiff, it's just not the default (not going to change that) 2) done for some time now 3) doesn't sound any clearer to me than the existing description ("older" and "newer" are dubious in this context).