Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 01:43:45 +0000 From: Niall Smart <rotel@indigo.ie> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: the place of vi Message-ID: <199804150043.BAA01063@indigo.ie>
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Hi This is a thread that some people want killed, but as far as I can see they are the same people who want to keep vi in /usr/bin; given that there are still a significant number of people, myself included, who strongly disagree with this view and given that the issues haven't been thrashed out fully I don't think we should kill it just yet. Several points have been made against moving vi to /bin, I don't think any are valid: a) just mount /usr and use it -- jb@cimlogic.com.au Well, it's already been pointed out that this is not viable if /usr is broken or corrupted. I think the point is that if you can get the system to mount the root partition then you should have a useable editor. b) just make it yourself -- mcdougall@ameritech.net This is always an option with any UNIX given the free availability of nvi, vim, etc., however it's too easy to forget to do. I believe it's the kind of thing that the maintainers of FreeBSD should look out for, if you want to ship a reliable system then you want to reduce the amount of customisation needed to make it foolproof. I remember that when I first started using FreeBSD one thing that struck me was that the people who designed the system always seemed to be one step ahead of me, when I went to do something it seemed that someone had already anticipated my requirement and done it for me, or made it easy for me to do. This is a big plus for FreeBSD. The only time I got let down was when I needed /bin/vi, I had always assumed you guys had put it there, and boy was I surprised when I found out you hadn't :) Corollary to Murphy's law: The machine you forget to install a statically linked /bin/vi on is the one you need it on most. c) it's too big -- chuckr@glue.umd.edu The stripped statically linked binary from -stable is only 466944 bytes, 230238 bytes more than the dynamically linked version - is that big? Chuck made the point that people who run stripped down systems mightn't want this ``bloat''. Others have made the point that people who think they need a static vi should know what they are doing and should therefore make it themselves. Might I suggest that people running stripped down systems know more about what they are doing than the average admin who expects a static vi and therefore they should be the ones who have to move it from /bin if/when it causes them grief. BTW I don't think Matther was proposing to put vi on the default boot floppy, just in the default /bin distribution. d) you would need to move termcap too -- winter@jurai.net This is not true, given that you are only going to be in single user mode at the console when in this kind of situation simply executing something like: TERM=cons25 tset -s > /etc/termcap.cons25 TERM=pcvt25 tset -s > /etc/termcap.pcvt25 during make install of vi would suffice, then to setup your environment before editing: eval `cat /etc/termcap.mytermtype` f) learn to use ed -- helbig@Informatik.BA-Stuttgart.DE, etc In an ideal world disks wouldn't crash, power would be uninterruptible, software wouldn't have bugs, etc. All the more reason to learn ed, right? Well, people don't do this, after all, we don't live in an ideal world. :) Many of the UNIX books which I have seen assume that when the chips are down, you still have vi on your side. The prevailing attitude seems to be: love it or hate it -- knowing vi could save your bacon. I sure as hell don't want to promote ed to this role. System administrators have enough to do without learning that (other?) insanely archaic editor, especially when their system just went blam, just because someone thought 400K extra on / was such a burden. If I was proposing putting emacs, joe, nedit, vim, pico, or ee on / I could understand the argument that a good system administrator should be able to get by without these tools, but we're talking about cranky old bog-standard-since-197X vi here! Surely one of the aims of the FreeBSD project is to make the system as easy to use as possible for all, including those system administrators who don't happen to know ed? (Yes yes, those inferior, spineless, clueless dweebs who don't own an "I can use ed" tshirt) What have you got to lose by putting vi in /bin? 400K of space on your root partition? Gimme a break! Niall -- Niall Smart. Microsoft Suck. See www.freebsd.org for details. echo "#define if(x) if(!(x))" >> /usr/include/stdio.h To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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