I've read a scrum book and have learned about the importance of visions. Visions like: "to put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade"
I'm currently switching my laptop (again) and I have the following vision: The Debian system should provide tools to make it possible to switch over from one machine to another in a matter of minutes without leaving any data, configuration or customization of the old machine behind. I've started by building debian packages with equivs that have dependencies to all packages that I've installed by hand on my old machine.[1] This is not comfortable. I started thinking about a tagging system that allows users to attach some information to each debian package: why did I install it? What is it category for me: debian-development, fun, scientific-paper-writing, children-education, ... On another machine I could then install packages based on such tags. I move as much data as possible into the custody of git-annex. I manage my dot files with vcsh. Now I'd like to know which files in /etc are still in their default state and which were modified by me, including a diff against the default. Is there some possibility to get this information? I have etckeeper installed but I don't see how it could give me this information. What other things are there that I'd want to move to the new machine? For example /var/spool/cron. I think I'll write a cronjob to do a daily listing of the packages that I've installed on my machine by hand[1] and that are not yet covered by an equivs package. [1] aptitude search "?not(?essential) ?installed ?not(?reverse- depends(?installed)) ?not(?reverse-predepends(?installed)) ?not(?reverse- recommends(thkoch-.*)) ?not(?reverse-suggests(thkoch-.*)) ?not(?priority(important)) ?not(?priority(required)) ?not(?priority(standard))" Maybe we should talk about this topic at the debconf in Switzerland? Regards, Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201306231856.02681.tho...@koch.ro
