[Yum] In pursuit of 32-bit => 64-bit upgrade path

[Les Mikesell]

Lars Damerow wrote:
>>From Gerry Reno <greno at verizon.net>, Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 11:37:08PM -0400:
>> It's not just wishing to make it so.  I'm willing to test various  
>> approaches to try to make this work.  And don't you think if a reliable  
>> solution was found that it would be supported?  Of course it would.  And  
>> system config mgmt?  Your talking bcfg2 or puppet?  By the time you  
>> setup all that xml you've typed 30 times as much as all the  
>> configuration in your entire system.  No thanks.
> 
> Hi Gerry,
> 
> Having been through a large 32- to 64-bit transition a few years ago, I
> agree with Seth wholeheartedly. Doing this as an upgrade has a huge
> number of devilish details and it's totally understandable that the
> Fedora project doesn't support it. Keep in mind that the Fedora project
> is staffed with volunteers, very few of which would have the time or
> need to keep a 32- to 64-bit upgrade path tested and supported.
> 
> And yes, you really do want to make these changes in a configuration
> management system, under source control, so that you can avoid getting
> into this situation again. Setting up all of that XML will save you a
> world of pain in many situations: dead hardware, new OS releases,
> educating new employees, and on and on.

Version control of files that you change is always a good thing, but 
configuration management tools always add some bizarre abstraction 
layers of their own that don't seem portable or likely to handle major 
changes in the underlaying file structure.  Are there any handy tools to 
just throw the files that RPM knows you've changed into subversion or a 
similar version control tool so there is no extra effort or abstraction 
to learn to be able to backtrack to find what changes were made and 
when?  With viewvc you could do all the human interaction with a web 
browser with an obvious layout.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com