[gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Eric Moncrieff]

Hello Gentoo Team,

I installed Gentoo today, and am  largly very impressed by what I see.
Many of my favourite BSDisms are here, as are most of the vital System
V features.  In short, great work! 

However, there's  one thing I'm really  unclear on.  You  left out any
mention of  the old  UNIX standard editor,  vi.  I've used  many, many
different UNIXen over the years,  and the *only* things which *always*
worked were /bin/sh and /usr/bin/vi.  They were sometimes in different
places, but vi always, *always* was around somewhere.  Not in Gentoo.

When I  discovered, to my surprise, that  I was forced to  use nano, I
immediately decided to take your  Portage system for a spin, and typed
'emerge  app-editors/vi'.  Vi was  built from  source (though  I'm not
clear on which particular vi you  used).  However, when I tried to run
it, it segfaulted.  So I was stuck with nano. 

So I  tried 'emerge app-editors/vim', which  built all of X  for me (I
have to remember the --pretend option).   This was fine, but it took a
long time, and all I wanted to do was edit my startup scripts.  

So now I've got a working vi, which I'm happy about.  Of course, after
kde finishes building,  I'm going to build emacs, so  I won't be using
my new  vi very much, but  still...For all this long  time, we've been
able to  count on vi  as the quick,  omnipresent editor.  But  not for
Gentoo.  

Why not? 

Thanks  again  for  your   cool  distribution.   I'm  really  enjoying
interacting with it; it's sane and clean.  I just like vi. 

Eric
** 
Eric Moncrieff                                    eric@mantis.styx.org

"If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a 
giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not 
free to draw a giraffe."  --G. K. Chesterton
**
GPG Fingerprint: C278 AECC 3292 C26B E9DA  0FD7 EE20 4AA7 E1AD 0D79

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Bjarke Sørensen]

On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 08:10:17PM -0400, Eric Moncrieff wrote:

> my new  vi very much, but  still...For all this long  time, we've been
> able to  count on vi  as the quick,  omnipresent editor.  But  not for
> Gentoo.  
> Why not? 

Beats me, never heard a good answer to that.

Btw, this should go in the FAQ. If there is a good answer that is.

If the reason if that everyone can use nano, then leave nano on the
installer as well. It's ohh so small anyways.

-- 
| Bjarke Sørensen  /  9000.WASD 
|
|  There are 10 types of people in this world:
|  Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Scott J Garner]

I second the motion to include vi.  All these
years spent learning to use it only to be forced
to use nano breaks my heart with each gentoo
install.

On Fri 24 May 2002 at 19:24 -0500,
Bjarke S?rensen wrote:

> On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 08:10:17PM -0400, Eric Moncrieff wrote:
> 
> > my new  vi very much, but  still...For all this long  time, we've been
> > able to  count on vi  as the quick,  omnipresent editor.  But  not for
> > Gentoo.  
> > Why not? 
> 
> Beats me, never heard a good answer to that.
> 
> Btw, this should go in the FAQ. If there is a good answer that is.
> 
> If the reason if that everyone can use nano, then leave nano on the
> installer as well. It's ohh so small anyways.
> 
> -- 
> | Bjarke S?rensen  /  9000.WASD 
> |
> |  There are 10 types of people in this world:
> |  Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
> 

-- 
-                 Scott J Garner                 -
-                Austin, TX - USA                -  
-           AIM: Jungalero  OPN: MrFab           -

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Luke Ravitch]

On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 07:32:16PM -0500, Scott J Garner wrote:
> I second the motion to include vi.  All these
> years spent learning to use it only to be forced
> to use nano breaks my heart with each gentoo
> install.

I vote for vi as well.  And, as is mentioned later in this thread, nvi
works quite well without dependency issues.  And since both apps are
so small (and the boot ISOs are tiny anyway), both vi and nano could
be included, pleasing nearly everyone.

-- 
Luke

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Spider]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 936 bytes --]

begin  quote
On Fri, 24 May 2002 18:58:09 -0700
Luke Ravitch <luke@dslextreme.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 07:32:16PM -0500, Scott J Garner wrote:
> > I second the motion to include vi.  All these
> > years spent learning to use it only to be forced
> > to use nano breaks my heart with each gentoo
> > install.
> 
> I vote for vi as well.  And, as is mentioned later in this thread, nvi
> works quite well without dependency issues.  And since both apps are
> so small (and the boot ISOs are tiny anyway), both vi and nano could
> be included, pleasing nearly everyone.
actually there are other constraints on the bootiso.. it has to fit
inside the ramdisc, which severly hampers the avaiable size for the
bootdisc system..

on the untarred system on the other hand,...

//Spider
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Arcady Genkin]

Luke Ravitch <luke@dslextreme.com> writes:

> On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 07:32:16PM -0500, Scott J Garner wrote:
>> I second the motion to include vi.
>
> I vote for vi as well.

See bug #2098.

             http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2098

-- 
Arcady Genkin
Thanks God I'm still an atheist! -- Luis Bunuel

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Spider]

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begin  quote
On Fri, 24 May 2002 20:10:17 -0400
Eric Moncrieff <eric@styx.org> wrote:

> Hello Gentoo Team,
> 
> When I  discovered, to my surprise, that  I was forced to  use nano, I
> immediately decided to take your  Portage system for a spin, and typed
> 'emerge  app-editors/vi'.  Vi was  built from  source (though  I'm not
> clear on which particular vi you  used).  However, when I tried to run
> it, it segfaulted.  So I was stuck with nano. 

Could you please give me a backtrace of this?  I'm the one "responsible"
for vi as of the moment, and this is the second occurance of a random
heisenbug for vi that I've seen, noone so far has been able to debug it
since it goes away with their second install (It works for me, in the
systems I've tried, could be a library interdependency bug)

As for the version of vi used, its the "original"  vi 3.7, as released
by Caldera into the open some time ago, linked against ncurses instead
of terminfo, mostly as a convenience. 

> So I  tried 'emerge app-editors/vim', which  built all of X  for me (I
> have to remember the --pretend option).   This was fine, but it took a
> long time, and all I wanted to do was edit my startup scripts.  

it only builds X if you have either:
  gnome
   gtk
  X
  tcltk 

in your  USE flags, its perfectly capable of building without X :)
(gtk requires X to build, gnome requires gtk, X.... well. and tk
requires X )

 
> So now I've got a working vi, which I'm happy about.  Of course, after
> kde finishes building,  I'm going to build emacs, so  I won't be using
> my new  vi very much, but  still...For all this long  time, we've been
> able to  count on vi  as the quick,  omnipresent editor.  But  not for
> Gentoo.  

No, vim was dropped at one point due to the amount of dependencies it
caused to build "proper" (ncurses terminfo I think it was), wether the
minimalist vi were a bit harsh and user-unfriendly according to some.
GNU Nano is relatively simple and fullfeatured, even for users who
havent tried it before.

//Spider

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Mikko Moilanen]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Saturday 25 May 2002 03:33, Spider wrote:
> begin  quote
> No, vim was dropped at one point due to the amount of dependencies it
> caused to build "proper" (ncurses terminfo I think it was), wether the
> minimalist vi were a bit harsh and user-unfriendly according to some.
> GNU Nano is relatively simple and fullfeatured, even for users who
> havent tried it before.

I like Vi too. I want to learn Vi. I was also disappointed that there was not 
Vi. Nano is good to come too. I just dont like "nano -w" and the way it 
handles wrappings.

If there is must to choose only one that would offcourse be Nano. But I think 
Vi should come as an alternative editor also.
- -- 

https://baldor.ath.cx


 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[MadCoder]

> I like Vi too. I want to learn Vi. I was also disappointed that there was
> not Vi. Nano is good to come too. I just dont like "nano -w" and the way it
> handles wrappings.
>
> If there is must to choose only one that would offcourse be Nano. But I
> think Vi should come as an alternative editor also.

since you can install gento from an other distribution, you will have vim ...
and when you have bootstraped, and emerge system, do a:

USE="-X -gtk -gnome" emerge vim

and you'll have vim.

You know, there's no vim in debian by default for example, it's too complex 
(thre's only a smaller clone nvi i think). But it's a greet editor :)
-- 
MadCoder (53 53)

"La différence entre la théorie et la pratique, c'est que en théorie,
il n'y a pas de différence entre la théorie et la pratique."

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[wes chow]

> > When I  discovered, to my surprise, that  I was forced to  use nano, I
> > immediately decided to take your  Portage system for a spin, and typed
> > 'emerge  app-editors/vi'.  Vi was  built from  source (though  I'm not
> > clear on which particular vi you  used).  However, when I tried to run
> > it, it segfaulted.  So I was stuck with nano.
>
> Could you please give me a backtrace of this?  I'm the one "responsible"
> for vi as of the moment, and this is the second occurance of a random
> heisenbug for vi that I've seen, noone so far has been able to debug it
> since it goes away with their second install (It works for me, in the
> systems I've tried, could be a library interdependency bug)

It segfaults for me too... but only if I run vi in the plain text console
(please correct me if I use the wrong terminology -- I'm new to Linux, but
not to Unix).  If I run vi from withing Gnome, it works fine.  I have yet
to install it a second time.

The backtrace doesn't look so instructive since there's no debug
information in the executable (and I'm afraid that recompiling vi will
make the problem go away):

#0  0x400495aa in tgoto () from /lib/libncurses.so.5
#1  0x0805856a in getline ()
#2  0x08049fad in strcpy ()
#3  0x4007e3bd in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6

Is there anything you need to know about my system?


Wes

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Spider]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 741 bytes --]

begin  quote
On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:38:23 -0400 (EDT)
wes chow <wes@woahnelly.net> wrote:

> 
> #0  0x400495aa in tgoto () from /lib/libncurses.so.5
> #1  0x0805856a in getline ()
> #2  0x08049fad in strcpy ()
> #3  0x4007e3bd in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6
> 
> Is there anything you need to know about my system?
> 
> 
Wow! finally a backtrace!!! : ) 

is this a gcc3 system? If it is, which ncurses verison? well, you can
tell me that anyhow ;)

Can you file a bug with : 
Gunnar Ritter
<g-r@bigfoot.de>
<http://ex-vi.berlios.de>

As he is the current maintainer of vi?
//Spider

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[wes chow]

I'm running gcc 2.95.3 with ncurses 5.2-r5.

Okay, I'll file the bug...  It's strange that it only seg faults in text
mode.  Why is that?  Does the ncurses library change depending on whether
you're in Gnome?  It seems to me that this might be a ncurses bug and not
a vi one.


Wes



On Sun, 26 May 2002, Spider wrote:

> begin  quote
> On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:38:23 -0400 (EDT)
> wes chow <wes@woahnelly.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > #0  0x400495aa in tgoto () from /lib/libncurses.so.5
> > #1  0x0805856a in getline ()
> > #2  0x08049fad in strcpy ()
> > #3  0x4007e3bd in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6
> >
> > Is there anything you need to know about my system?
> >
> >
> Wow! finally a backtrace!!! : )
>
> is this a gcc3 system? If it is, which ncurses verison? well, you can
> tell me that anyhow ;)
>
> Can you file a bug with :
> Gunnar Ritter
> <g-r@bigfoot.de>
> <http://ex-vi.berlios.de>
>
> As he is the current maintainer of vi?
> //Spider
>
> --
> begin  .signature
> This is a .signature virus! Please copy me into your .signature!
> See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more information.
> end
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[wes chow]

I did a little bit of poking around, and it seems that vi has issues with
the "linux" termcap.  I found that if I change the TERM environment
variable for my text console from "linux" to "ansi", a very quick test of
vi seems to work fine.

I think I've narrowed down the problem to a call to the tgetstr function
in ncurses, attempting to get some value that should be non-null, which
leads me to believe that maybe the term settings for "linux" might not be
totally kosher.  I don't really know how a lot of the termcap stuff works
(this is my first exposure to it), but if you want, I can provide somebody
(Spider?) with my reasoning+gdb output...  I don't think that it's a vi
(or necessarily ncurses) problem anymore.


Wes



On Sun, 26 May 2002, wes chow wrote:

>
> I'm running gcc 2.95.3 with ncurses 5.2-r5.
>
> Okay, I'll file the bug...  It's strange that it only seg faults in text
> mode.  Why is that?  Does the ncurses library change depending on whether
> you're in Gnome?  It seems to me that this might be a ncurses bug and not
> a vi one.
>
>
> Wes
>
>
>
> On Sun, 26 May 2002, Spider wrote:
>
> > begin  quote
> > On Sat, 25 May 2002 11:38:23 -0400 (EDT)
> > wes chow <wes@woahnelly.net> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > #0  0x400495aa in tgoto () from /lib/libncurses.so.5
> > > #1  0x0805856a in getline ()
> > > #2  0x08049fad in strcpy ()
> > > #3  0x4007e3bd in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6
> > >
> > > Is there anything you need to know about my system?
> > >
> > >
> > Wow! finally a backtrace!!! : )
> >
> > is this a gcc3 system? If it is, which ncurses verison? well, you can
> > tell me that anyhow ;)
> >
> > Can you file a bug with :
> > Gunnar Ritter
> > <g-r@bigfoot.de>
> > <http://ex-vi.berlios.de>
> >
> > As he is the current maintainer of vi?
> > //Spider
> >
> > --
> > begin  .signature
> > This is a .signature virus! Please copy me into your .signature!
> > See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more information.
> > end
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Per Wigren]

Yes, I agree wholeheartly! Nano out, Vi in...
Vi is even available as a busybox-applet in the default unpatched 
bosybox-distribution, so there you have even less reason to run an "external" 
(non-busybox) editor... 

But if you DO decide to go with nano, at least make an alias nano="nano -w" by 
default...

// Wigren

[gentoo-dev] Re: Why not vi?

[Paul]

Per Wigren <wigren@home.se>, on Sat May 25, 2002 [11:43:09 AM] said:
> Yes, I agree wholeheartly! Nano out, Vi in...
> Vi is even available as a busybox-applet in the default unpatched 
> bosybox-distribution, so there you have even less reason to run an "external" 
> (non-busybox) editor... 
> 
> But if you DO decide to go with nano, at least make an alias nano="nano -w" by 
> default...
> 

	Hi;

	This was my major problem with nano (besides it being
awkward) by default it screwed up the file I needed to edit with
its wrapping when I tried it. Fortunately, 'ed' was there. Im not
sure at what point I had access to it, as I wasnt able to boot
the cdrom for my install and had to wing it, but I would hope
s/ed would be there from the very begining. I prefer vi, but if
space is tight, give me ed...

Paul
set@pobox.com

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Jack Morgan]

On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 08:10:17PM -0400, Eric Moncrieff wrote:
> Hello Gentoo Team,
> 
> I installed Gentoo today, and am  largly very impressed by what I see.
> Many of my favourite BSDisms are here, as are most of the vital System
> V features.  In short, great work! 
> 
> However, there's  one thing I'm really  unclear on.  You  left out any
> mention of  the old  UNIX standard editor,  vi.  I've used  many, many
> different UNIXen over the years,  and the *only* things which *always*
> worked were /bin/sh and /usr/bin/vi.  They were sometimes in different
> places, but vi always, *always* was around somewhere.  Not in Gentoo.
> 
> When I  discovered, to my surprise, that  I was forced to  use nano, I
> immediately decided to take your  Portage system for a spin, and typed
> 'emerge  app-editors/vi'.  Vi was  built from  source (though  I'm not
> clear on which particular vi you  used).  However, when I tried to run
> it, it segfaulted.  So I was stuck with nano. 
> 
> So I  tried 'emerge app-editors/vim', which  built all of X  for me (I
> have to remember the --pretend option).   This was fine, but it took a
> long time, and all I wanted to do was edit my startup scripts.  
> 
> So now I've got a working vi, which I'm happy about.  Of course, after
> kde finishes building,  I'm going to build emacs, so  I won't be using
> my new  vi very much, but  still...For all this long  time, we've been
> able to  count on vi  as the quick,  omnipresent editor.  But  not for
> Gentoo.  


emerge app-editor/nvi works for me. No need for all those dependencies.


-- 
jack_morgan

Re: [gentoo-dev] Why not vi?

[Gabriele Giorgetti]

What about joe :-) ?