> --On Friday, June 05, 2020 1:39 PM -0700 John Pierce > <jhn.pierce at gmail.com> > wrote: > >> don't most packages create a .rpmnew file if you've modified the >> previous >> package file ? > > That file is created AFTER you've made edits, and reflects only the state > of the file in the latest package. So it's not clear what changed from the > original package that needs to be migrated into one's current settings. > > As a rule I try to copy the original files to xxx.original so I can > compare > that to both the .rpmnew file and my working file. But I or another admin > might forget to save the original. So I end up going the cpio route to > extract the original files to a temp tree to do the 3-way comparison > between the original, my modifications, and the latest package's > modifications. I do something similar. Before editing any config file, I create a copy of it named xxx.orig. If I once forgot to do it in time, I have a helper script 'mkorig [file]' which extracts the file from the corresponding RPM. Now when doing upgrades with our package managing tool, this will upgrade using YUM/DNF and after this it's merging all config files. This goes well in ~95% of the cases. For the cases where merging wasn't possible, it produces the .rej files so one can merge by hand. Simon