Re: [gentoo-dev] gentoo text editors

[Matthew Kennedy <mkennedy@gentoo.org>]

Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> writes:

> On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 01:38, Matthew Kennedy wrote:
>> I know we have virtual/editor etc. but do we have a mechanism to
>> invoke the users choice in editor?
>> 
>> Not all stuff I've encountered cares about $EDITOR etc., and I ask
>> because of a recent change in dev-lisp/clisp where i needed to set a
>> specific editor.
>> 
>> Any volunteers to implement the Debian "alternatives" system?  Or
>> maybe we just want a /usr/bin/generic-editor...
>> 
>> Matt
>
> For the slightly clueless, of which I am one, can you explain both
> methods?  The /usr/bin/generic-editor in particular piques my
> interest.

Really they are the same thing in the general sense.  IIRC, Debian's
alternative system works like this (arrows are symlinks)

  /usr/bin/editor --> /etc/alternatives/editor

  /etc/alternatives/editor --> /usr/bin/emacs

Just a simple indirection, really.

The cool part is the Debian update-alternatives program.  You run it
like this:

# update-alternatives --config editor
 
There are 3 programs which provide `editor'.
 
  Selection    Command
-----------------------------------------------
*+    1        /usr/bin/nano
      2        /bin/ed
      3        /usr/bin/nvi
 
Enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:

The "+" indicates the currently selected program. Selecting a new
choice adjusts what that symlink from /etc/alternatives/editor points
to.  This works system-wide of course.

Debian really have got this well integrated into their distro.  The
have alternatives arranged for editors, awks, ftps, infobrowsers,
pagers, telnet clients, java runtimes and sdks, etc.

I think if we really want to continue with our mantra of
customizability, we really need something like this respected portage
wide.

Matt
-- 
Matthew Kennedy
Gentoo Linux Developer

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