Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:10:41 -0600 From: Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: The question of moving vi to /bin Message-ID: <20090624161041.GD84350@kokopelli.hydra> In-Reply-To: <d873d5be0906240613s1050323bpdd28aaedddf2cb9d@mail.gmail.com> References: <d873d5be0906240613s1050323bpdd28aaedddf2cb9d@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--Y/WcH0a6A93yCHGr Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 06:13:49AM -0700, b. f. wrote: > > On Tuesday 23 June 2009 15:41:48 Manish Jain wrote: >=20 > >That's the whole problem of /rescue/vi. When you suddenly find yourself > >in single-user mode, the last thing you want to do is realise that > >tweaking is needed for something which should work normally just when > >you need it, and quickly too. >=20 > Yes. But there have been some recent changes: >=20 > http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194628 >=20 > that suggest that this problem is being addressed. That's definitely good news. There isn't much point in putting something in /rescue that won't work when other filesystems won't mount. >=20 > >But why are we talking about a few hundred > >kilos for such a basic utility as vi in times when everyone has hundreds > >of GB's on the disk, and the / partition itself is 512 MB by default. > >The BSD concept of having vi under /usr originated when resources were > >less by a factor of thousands (<=3D (100 MB disks), <=3D (8 MB physical = RAM) > >and so on). When we are well past those kind of constraints, the concept > >needs an rethink. >=20 > No, we're not. A lot of people are still using old hardware, or > embedded hardware, where efficiency in space and computational effort > are still important, and will remain so for a while. Please don't > encourage bloat. I sympathize with the desire to keep "bloat" down for the minimal default case. Embedded systems were the first examples that came to mind for cases where having vi in /bin might not be ideal. On the other hand, I don't see any reason to refuse to offer an optional install of /bin/vi for those who prefer it and don't want to have to brute-force "install" it by manually copying it, thus eliminating relatively simple and easy upgrades when security concerns demand it. --=20 Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] Quoth Jon Postel, RFC 761: "[B]e conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others." --Y/WcH0a6A93yCHGr Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.10 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkpCUAEACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKWeKwCdHf1MmOjmI4LlVWkmMUO37Isd /MkAn2d+l+Y3lMi6Ugj69ishoTrvsF3X =b+DR -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Y/WcH0a6A93yCHGr--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20090624161041.GD84350>