[pacman-dev] pacman.conf little clean up

[Dan McGee]

On Jan 27, 2008 4:22 AM, Xavier <shiningxc at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) Why do we have this comment everywhere in the conf file :
> # Add your preferred servers here, they will be used first
>
> In my opinion, all these lines could disappear. It's recommended that
> you keep all your repositories in sync. That means using the same mirror
> for all official repo.
> And since all official repo already have this by default :
> Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
>
> Only that file needs to be edited, and this will affect all official
> repo automatically.
> Advanced users who know what they are doing might not want to use the
> same mirror everywhere for specific reasons. But I don't think they need
> a comment everywhere explaining how to do it.
>
> But that comment might rather belong to the mirrorlist file.
>
> 2) For similar reasons, I don't think the following comment is needed :
> # REPOSITORIES
> #   - can be defined here or included from another file
>
> I doubt many people use that.
> pacman.conf currently has only two parts : a few options, and the
> repositories. I don't think there is a need to split these.
> And again, people who do it probably know what they are doing.
>
> 3) I find pacman.conf more readable with more new lines (especially when
> read without syntax highlighting), so I added a few of these as well, to
> better separate the different parts, like the comments and the commented
> lines.
>
>
> Anyway, all these things are not important at all, and might be stupid
> ideas. It's just random thoughts that came to my mind after seeing an
> user messed up again configuring his pacman.conf.

I don't see too much more cleanup being needed here after the earlier
cleanups to be honest. I'll try to respond briefly. Sure there are
duplicate "add your mirror here" comments, but those helped me when I
first started with Arch in understanding the Server vs. Include
directives, so I think they make some sense.

I also think the REPOSITORIES section is a much more succinct way of
describing the file than the pacman.conf manpage (although this is new
with post-2.9.8 release I believe, which could explain why it was
definitely necessary before).

And finally, I tend to find it more readable with the current number
of newlines- I like it to fit on one terminal page if possible, and
too many newlines could make the file seem unreasonably line. This is
a *default* flie- people can do whatever they want to it.

-Dan