Bug#784268: vim-tiny should provide vim alternative

Lennart Sorensen lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Wed May 6 14:47:59 UTC 2015


On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 12:06:02AM -0400, James McCoy wrote:
> This is the new description I have committed:
> 
> Description: Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version
>  Vim is an almost compatible version of the UNIX editor Vi.
>  .
>  This package contains a minimal version of vim compiled with no GUI and
>  a small subset of features. This package's primary purpose is to
>  provide the vi binary for base installations.
>  .
>  If a more featureful build of Vim is wanted, try one of the following
>  packages: vim, vim-nox, vim-athena, vim-gtk, or vim-gnome.

I still think it should explicitly state that the package does NOT
provide vim, given how many times in the description it mentions vim.

Stating that the primary purpose is to provide vi does not in any way
make anyone think that it does not provide some kind of vim.  Sure the
primary purpose is to provide vi, but obviously the secondary purpose
must be to provide a stripped down version of vim.  That's what the
description still says it does.

And the last line says if you want a better vim, install one of the
others packages, which again completely implies that this package does
provide vim.

How about:

Description: Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version
 Vim is an almost compatible version of the UNIX editor Vi.
 .
 This package contains a minimal version of vim compiled with no GUI and
 a small subset of features. This package's only purpose is to provide
 the vi binary for base installations.
 .
 If Vim is wanted, try one of the following more featureful packages:
 vim, vim-nox, vim-athena, vim-gtk, or vim-gnome.

> I'll give some thought to making vim-runtime a Recommends instead of a
> Depends for the other Vim packages.  I need to determine what impact
> that would have, but would that be a viable alternative for you?

I don't think it would help me that much and I don't like how that would
impact typical users if anyone happens to use --no-install-recommends,
or configure apt to work like it used to.

So I would not think such a change was a good idea.

> Yes, nvi used to fill this role.  Looking back at the discussion (hey,
> you were involved back then too), the re-creation of vim-tiny and
> discussion around replacing nvi happened at the same time.  Once
> vim-tiny was in a testable state, the question was raised about whether
> it should be part of base.

I probably wasn't reading the lists back then, and for the most part I
do have full vim installed.  I just happen to work with a lot of smaller
systems too where having vim is nice but have no need for most of the
features and certainly nothing from the runtime, but that is a special
case environment and I can fix things for it myself.

I forgot I was involved in that discussion 10 years ago.  Even then
I wanted a smaller vim for the exact same systems.  Somethings never
change do they.

Apparently I am consistent and persistent.

-- 
Len Sorensen



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