The ed line editor is the most trivial and basic editor in existence. When all else fails and you have nothing but a serial line console then you know that ed will work there. https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/ed.html Would be nice if ed was in the base packages long before nano or vim or emacs or any other editor. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: s$ ed foo sh: ed: command not found Actual Results: s$ ed foo sh: ed: command not found Expected Results: A sense of loss. Perhaps even grief. Because "ed is the standard text editor". ED(1) User Commands ED(1) NAME ed - line-oriented text editor SYNOPSIS ed [options] [file] DESCRIPTION GNU ed is a line-oriented text editor. It is used to create, display, modify and otherwise manipulate text files, both in‐ teractively and via shell scripts. A restricted version of ed, red, can only edit files in the current directory and cannot execute shell commands. Ed is the 'standard' text editor in the sense that it is the original editor for Unix, and thus widely available. For most purposes, however, it is superseded by full-screen editors such as GNU Emacs or GNU Moe.
Very few users would even know how to use ed; it makes no sense to force it to be installed on every system.
(In reply to Mike Gilbert from comment #1) > Very few users would even know how to use ed; it makes no sense to force it > to be installed on every system. The argument here is that no one knows how to use ed?
To quote you: > Ed is the 'standard' text editor in the sense that it is the original editor for Unix, [..]. > For most purposes, however, it is superseded by full-screen editors such as GNU Emacs or GNU Moe. If you feel the need to have ed in your base packages you can create yourself a profile that adds that. As a proficient user this should be an easy task for you. Should that not be the case, the available support options can be found under <https://www.gentoo.org/support/> and <https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Support>.
I would be opposed to adding ed by default for users that don't care about having a full collection of POSIX utilities and don't expect to be in a situation where they "have nothing but a serial line console". However I think it's a good idea to have a virtual package called "posix" that users can optionally install, and, if installed, guarantees to pull in all necessary packages to ensure that their gentoo systems are posix compliant to the fullest extent that can be managed (without attempting to offer Open Group certification though :P). This would, among other things, guarantee ed is installed. If there is general interest in this I'd be happy to look into authoring that virtual package (I have done so before but not for Gentoo).
(In reply to Eli Schwartz from comment #4) > I would be opposed to adding ed by default for users that don't care about > having a full collection of POSIX utilities and don't expect to be in a > situation where they "have nothing but a serial line console". > Of course I was thinking of some emergency type situation on strange hardware. Sure, I have to agree that most people have hardly ever looked at the old two letter things like ed or nl. when is the last time you saw someone pipe source through nl -b a -n rz ? Back in the early '80s perhaps. How about nroff and troff? Having said all that, basic subset of things like uuencode and ed and that stuff would be nice to have around. Dennis
(In reply to Dennis Clarke from comment #5) > Having said all that, basic subset of things like uuencode and ed and > that stuff would be nice to have around. > > Dennis Then install them?
