Knowing when a user configuration has changed

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This question is the result of reading [Howto] Upgrade Manjaro to the latest version which was mentioned in Will I have to reinstall Manjaro after the version after Ruah is released?

I know when system configuration files have changed (additions, deletions, modifications) because of .pacnew. I know when the nano configuration has changed because /etc/nanorc gets a .pacnew, and after comparing files in /etc/, I compare /etc/nanorc with ~/.config/nano/nanorc.

How do I know when files in /etc/skel/.config have changed?

First I wanted to know which packages at this time put files into /etc/skel/.config, so I ran the following:

for p in $(pacman -Fqx /etc/skel/.config | cut -d'/' -f2); do 
  pacman -Qq "$p"
done |& 
  grep --invert-match 'error:' |
  xargs -I'{}' grep '{}' /var/log/pacman.log

I now know I should watch manjaro-xfce-settings. But how do I know what changed, or which file(s) in ~/.config to compare?

My first two thoughts were:

  1. add a blank line to each file in /etc/skel/.config, which I think would generate a .pacnew file.
  2. copy the directory /etc/skel/ to /etc/skel.install and when I see that the package manjaro-xfce-settings was updated from the pacman.log, I would meld/diff the two /etc/skel directories to know which file I should check in ~/.config.

Then there is the whole issue of dconf settings. Over the years, how does a user keep it clean and current?

I guess another approach would be to do nothing, and as long as the XFCE desktop works, no problem. :slight_smile: