Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 07:26:18 -0700 From: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca> To: Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org> Cc: Will Andrews <will@physics.purdue.edu>, Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com>, Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>, Bill Fenner <fenner@research.att.com>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: nvi maintainer? Message-ID: <200107081427.f68ER8P03582@cwsys.cwsent.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 08 Jul 2001 02:37:45 PDT." <20010708093745.DB2303811@overcee.netplex.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In message <20010708093745.DB2303811@overcee.netplex.com.au>, Peter Wemm writes : > Will Andrews wrote: > > [ moving from developers@ to arch@ ] > > > > On Sun, Jul 08, 2001 at 12:51:55AM -0700, Jason Evans (jasone@canonware.com > ) > wrote: > > > This unfortunately means that FreeBSD will not be able to use the next > > > release of nvi as part of the base system. In other words, we're going t > o > > > have to fork nvi. Yuck. > > > > OR... import Vim and get rid of nvi? :-) > > > > http://www.vim.org/ > > > What do you say? 8) > > I'm beginning to wonder.. The real question is whether it is a faithful > enough drop-in replacement for nvi. I'll alias it on some of my machines > and see if it bites me or not. > > The next thing is that moving a port to the base system usually has a > pretty chilling effect on the package.. Is that going to OK with regular > vim users who are used to having a dynamic, regularly updated port? At one time I had replaced vi (renamed vi and symlinked vim in its place) on a few FreeBSD, Solaris, and DEC UNIX systems. There was one feature of vim that confused me and another that I did not care about. Sometimes when I edit a file I might make a change then compare the change with what was before, using the undo ("u") function as a toggle between old and new. I suppose I could have used undo and redo under vim, however with many other systems I was maintaining at the time still using the vendor's original vi, of which I could not replace because of customers, retraining myself to instinctively use one approach on one set of systems and another on another set of systems caused some confusion, as I'd have to stop and think, "which system was I on?" My solution, set undolevels=0 Setting undolevels=0 causes vim to have the same undo/redo behaviour as vendor vi and nvi. Vim creates a backup file when saving edits to a file. The disks on those systems with vim installed had backup copies peppered everywhere within the filesystems of those systems that had it installed. One solution was to create a cron job to delete the backup files after a predetermined number of days. The solution I finally used was, set nobackup Other than the above two complaints I found that vim was the same as vendor vi and nvi. If you're looking for a faithful enough replacement for nvi, I suppose undolevels=0 and nobackup could be the default behaviour under FreeBSD. What about PicoBSD and small embedded applications of FreeBSD? -r-xr-xr-x 6 root wheel 283300 Jun 7 09:39 /usr/bin/vi -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1016184 May 28 08:16 /usr/local/bin/vim On RH 7.1 vim without the GUI is, -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 377404 Apr 2 06:24 /bin/vi Lately I've been using gvim (the GUI vim). It has the advantage of being able to cut and paste files, like syslog.conf that have tab characters, into Xterm sessions with tab characters intact, e.g. not expanded to spaces. If we do go ahead and replace nvi with vim, whomever does the work, please include gvim in the base distribution. I would hate to have vim in the base system only to install the vim port just to get gvim. (Of course this is a major cause of the bloat I complained about above -- a make.conf option maybe?) :/ You also raise a good point about packages being chilled in the base system. I've upgraded packages in the base system, when I've needed the upgrade before FreeBSD has had it available by replacing whatever is in /usr/src/contrib with the new package, in the past namely, amd, bind, cvs, ipfilter, isc-dhcp, and sendmail. Usually its just a drop in replacement and rebuild the various bits and pieces, and occasionally a minor patch to a makefile or two or a buildworld. For those who cannot wait, this approach is definitely an option. Alternatively have no vi or vim in the base system at all. Sysinstall could make it mandatory to install one of the vim packages for you while buildworld could build vim in ports. (OK, it's an off the wall idea but hey, it's an option). > > Cheers, > -Peter > -- > Peter Wemm - peter@FreeBSD.org; peter@yahoo-inc.com; peter@netplex.com.au > "All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5 Regards, Phone: (250)387-8437 Cy Schubert Fax: (250)387-5766 Team Leader, Sun/Alpha Team Internet: Cy.Schubert@osg.gov.bc.ca Open Systems Group, ITSD, ISTA Province of BC To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200107081427.f68ER8P03582>