Re: Manage ssh public keys?

[Joe Hillenbrand <joehillen@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 7:21 AM, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:
>> How about use symlinks, but:
>>   - create them if they are not exists.
>>   - update them if they are symlinks to /gnu/store.
>>   - warn and do nothing about them if they aren't symlinks to store.
>
> The problem is that that would be stateful, and thus not reproducible.
> So I think conditionals like this are not desirable.
>
> Ludo’.

Something to keep in mind is what a user means when they add a "files"
argument to user-account. I take this to mean "I want the operating
system configurations to manage this file, not the user", which to me
means, clobber a file if it is already there and symlink it to
/gnu/store. The question then is, what happens when the configuration
changes from having a "files" argument to not having one. What happens
to the links?

Also on the topic of a "files" option, what about managing a
collection of files, like a directory of dotfiles or ~/.emacs? Would
it be possible to use this option with something like "git-fetch"?