rollback capability for linux config files and scripts

Satish Balay balay at fastmail.fm
Tue Mar 11 16:35:33 CDT 2008


On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, Marcin Kasperski wrote:

> >> Frequently, when I modify my scripts or config files on my Linux box I'm
> >> afraid I'll break something and hence make a manual backup copy. This only
> >> gets me a manual, rudimentary rollback capability. I was looking into using
> >> cvs / mercury / subversion to help me get this a little more efficient and
> >> safer.
> >> (...)
> >
> > If its just keeping track of changes to a few files spread out [in
> > different directories], I would just use RCS. Its primary purpose was
> > to track individual files changes anyway..
> 
> RCS does not handle file renames, removals etc, not to mention symlinks.

rename:

mv foo bar; mv RCS/foo,v RCS/bar,v

delete:

rm foo; [optionally rm RCS/foo,v]

symlinks - not sure what you mean here. If there is a simlink foo ->
bar, I would have 'bar' under RCS.

and use emacs VC mode for all edits.


> I am using mercurial for similar tasks, and I am fairly glad with that.
> My approach is simple - I 'hg init' in crucial configuration directories,
> review && addremove && commit after automatical updates, commit with
> reasonable comments after own updates etc.
> 
> This works for me smoothly, from /etc to ~/emacs ...

Sure this is an option. However OP was hesitant to use this approach -
so I indicated another apporach of using a single mercurial repo with
soft-links. [to multiple dirs].

Satish


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