I'd like to be able to commit a single change into etckeeper's VCS that reflected more than one apt action.
As a developer I prefer to see commits representing a logically complete piece of work, not something that requires follow-on commits before the system is back in a sane / consistent state.
Consider the case of installing Sublime Text for Linux (** - see bottom), there are several steps, all of which are parts of a single logical action that should be committed as one operation into git (or whatever VCS).
- wget ... | apt-key add -
- apt-get install apt-transport-https
- create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sublime-text.list
- apt-get update
- apt-get install sublime-text
Ideally the work-flow would look like:
- etckeeper begin-transaction
- wget ... | apt-key add -
- git add apt/trusted.gpg
- apt-get install apt-transport-https
etckeeper WARNS about uncommitted changes / transaction still open
(instead of aborting)
- create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sublime-text.list
- git add apt/sources.list.d/sublime-text.list
- apt-get update
etckeeper WARNS...
- apt-get install sublime-text
etckeeper WARNS...
- etckeeper finish-transaction # commits to VCS
(*) https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html
One way to accomplish this is to
git branch -f transaction masterat the start, and once all intermediate commits have been made (by etckeeper or by you), rungit reset transaction; etckeeper commit "transaction description".It's also sometimes handy to then generate a merge commit between the final transaction commit and the last intermediate commit; then you have both the transactions and all the intermediate steps accessible in git log; the git history has a diamond shape.
I'd be willing to consider patches along these lines..