bug#20720: Inconsistency in text fields for 'operating-system'

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès (2015-06-05 15:30 +0300) wrote:

[...]

>> The right thing to do is:
>>
>>   (syslog-service #:config-file
>>                   (local-file "/home/me/my-favourite-syslog.conf"))
>>
>> This means that the config file is automatically added to the store and
>> made part of the closure of the OS config.  Now if
>> "/home/me/my-favourite-syslog.conf" is removed/modified, the OS behavior
>> remains unchanged.
>
> And that's exactly what I don't want!  I don't want my config files to
> be put into the store.  Because I have to reconfigure the system to see
> the changes.  With my current unpredicable way, I can change my
> syslog.conf and the next time I boot into the same system, I will face
> the changes I made.
>
> I realize that it sounds like a strange whim and is not what is supposed
> to be done, but, well, I just like it :-)

Fair enough.  :-)

Well, that will keep working, because we can’t really enforce config
files in the store.

Now, of course the solution will be for ‘guix system reconfigure’ to
restart services that can be restarted.  The goal is not to force people
to reboot for changes to take effect. :-)  That “just” has to be done.

>> I’ll prepare a patch for that and report back.
>
> Thank you, in spite of all I said earlier, I really like ‘local-file’!

Commits 24e02c2 and 8476583 change ‘hosts-file’ and ‘sudoers’ as
discussed.  Are there others left or can we close the bug?

Thanks!

Ludo’.