From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-06-13, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:

Le 10-06-2026, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> a écrit :

On Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:26:41 GMT, TheLastSysop wrote:

... and "someone changed this yesterday".

Some people turn their entire /etc into a Git repo. Thoughts?

I discovered it a few months ago and found it a good idea.

I never did it on my personal computer. But on servers managed by many admisys it's a good thing. That help to know what others have done and
why. At the same time on a file, but when many files are concerned it's
very helpful. For example, when postfix works with opendkim, some
variables must be consistent between those two programs and being able
to see at a glance if a change has been correctly reported is really
good.

It's hard for me not to see a VCS for configuration files as a big
advantage - besides keeping a separate log of changes, you can document changesets directly and that will probably make things easier for your
future self. (And, if you ever build a time machine, for your past self
too.)

Now this is something where configuration files in text format with
frequent line breaks are an advantage - because then bringing these
under a VCS in a usable way should be quite simple. Just like LaTeX can
be an improvement over XML-based text document formats (although at
least ODF has "flat file" variants, I'll hazard a guess readability does
not improve much? or does e.g. LibO actually address that concern
somehow when using a "flat" format?).
--
Nuno Silva
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

Le 14-06-2026, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> a écrit :

On 2026-06-13, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:

Le 10-06-2026, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> a écrit :

On Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:26:41 GMT, TheLastSysop wrote:

... and "someone changed this yesterday".

Some people turn their entire /etc into a Git repo. Thoughts?

I discovered it a few months ago and found it a good idea.

I never did it on my personal computer. But on servers managed by many
admisys it's a good thing. That help to know what others have done and
why. At the same time on a file, but when many files are concerned it's
very helpful. For example, when postfix works with opendkim, some
variables must be consistent between those two programs and being able
to see at a glance if a change has been correctly reported is really
good.

It's hard for me not to see a VCS for configuration files as a big
advantage - besides keeping a separate log of changes, you can document changesets directly and that will probably make things easier for your
future self. (And, if you ever build a time machine, for your past self
too.)

Agreed but the question here was only /etc. On my personal computer, I
don't need that because I don't need a heavy personalization of files in
/etc. For my dotfiles, it's another subject: I'm using git from a long
time. And I know why. And for...

Now this is something where configuration files in text format with
frequent line breaks are an advantage - because then bringing these
under a VCS in a usable way should be quite simple. Just like LaTeX can
be an improvement over XML-based text document formats (although at
least ODF has "flat file" variants, I'll hazard a guess readability does
not improve much? or does e.g. LibO actually address that concern
somehow when using a "flat" format?).

I know nothing about LibreOffice (and I don't care about it), but for
LaTeX, it's way more important for me. I'm using git to manage my LaTeX
files since years, well before using git for my dotfiles.
I have one sentence == one line. So, I can see at a glance if my
sentences are too long. And for control versioning or moving my
sentences from one place to one other it's very easy. And I let LaTeX
take care of my paragraphs correctly.

And thanks to gitlab, I just have to send my LaTeX files on gitlab and
let the gitlab CI/CD compile my pdf for me without caring about it. And
it's a free backup at the same time.

So yes, I fully agree. I was really speaking about using git for /etc on
my personal computer when I was saying I'm not sure it would be that
helpful. Because my /etc, unlike other personal text files, is very
stable and almost not personalized. I'd say the thing that changes the
most is the list of arch servers /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist but it's
useless to manage it with VCS because it's regenerated from scratch.
--
Si vous avez du temps à perdre :
https://scarpet42.gitlab.io
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