[maemo-developers] Autobuilder is broken again

[From: Jeff Moe]

On Saturday 09 January 2010 06:36:12 Ed Bartosh wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> Do you happen to know who switched off armel builds and why?

May I humbly suggest using something like `git` to track configuration changes? In this case it may not have helped (e.g. if someone did a `/etc/init.d/foo stop`), but it will help you keep track of what changes are going on in the system if you have multiple admins.

Quick & dirty example:
Have each user set up a ~/.gitconfig like:
[user]
	name = Jeff Moe
	email = moe at blagblagblag.org
[color]
  branch = auto
  diff = auto
  status = auto



sudo bash

apt-get install git-core

cd /etc

# make a /etc/.gitignore file along the lines of this:
ld.so.cache
prelink.cache
*.swp
ld.so.cache
adjtime
blkid.tab
blkid.tab.old
mtab
adjtime
ld.so.cache


git init

chmod og-rwx .git

git add .

EDITOR=vim git commit -a


Then do `git add foo` when new files are added and `git commit -a` when finished making config changes. Then if you want to know WTF is going on, you can cd to /etc (as root) and run `git log`. If someone made changes, but didn't commit them, it's easy to check with `git diff`. You can also keep track of who made what changes too. This can be done with any directory, of course. Really works only with text files. If there's binaries in the sub dirs, you can add them to .gitignore or just never `git add` them. To blow out the whole git repo just `rm -r /etc/.git` and you can start fresh. Check `git status` often too (in /etc dir).


If you really want to go gung ho managing lots of systems configurations, you could check out puppet (I've never used it, but looks good):
http://projects.reductivelabs.com/projects/puppet

Thanks,

-Jeff
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba