Config-Model related project for GSoC 2010

Hello

It’s official: I’m going to mentor a project related to config-model (without forgetting Augeas which might also be involved) this year:

Content-aware Config Files Upgrading
by Krzysztof Tyszecki, mentored by Dominique Dumont

When a package deliver configuration files, the problem of merging user data with new configuration instructions will arise during package upgrades on users systems. Sometimes merging can be done with 3 way merge, but this process does not insure that the resulting file is correct or even legal. This project intends to create standards,
tools and heuristics to make the scary config file conflict resolution debconf prompt a thing of the past.

This project is hosted by Debian organization. Since this project might interest a lot of people, I will (try to) blog regularly on progress, issues, ideas.

From you people, I’d like feedback and more importantly, I’d like to get real life use cases.

What are the configuration upgrade scenario that bothered you ? What was your configuration file ? What was the setup done by package maintainer ? What result did you get ? What result did you expected to get ?

All the best