Tell me that this is some sort of a sick joke, please? Gentoo is "geared towards Linux power users" and yet vi is not on the CD? wow. (Just for your info... I've compiled 'nvi' locally, and the resulting binary is 30kB, so it's only 1/3 the size of the 'nano' binary you're shipping. Space is obviously not the issue here.) -clee
FWIW, I'd like to voice my agreement with Chris. That 'nano' thing would be a laugh, if it were not for the absence of 'vi'. ;^) IMO 'nano' is absolutely inadequate for Gentoo distribution, given its target users. 'vi' should be on the boot CD and in the base system, and I think that it should be the default editor right out of the box. Please note that I'm an avid emacs user, and the only reason I advocate `vi' here is that it's the de facto standard as far as Unix text editors go. A Unix distro without `vi' command is incomplete.
I, too, would like to see vi on the rescue disk. Way better than having to remember adding -w to the nano command line. If you know how to use it, it will not clobber files as easily as other editors. Sadly enough, the binary may be 30k, but it needs libdb-3.2 and libvi, totalling about 800KB. I couldn't figure out a way to make it use less than that, so if vi were to be included, it should be yet another clone that's actually small, like elvis-tiny and levee: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/base/elvis-tiny.html http://www.pell.chi.il.us/~orc/ To compile levee, make LIBES=-lncurses in Makefile and make. Resulting executable is 40KB after stripping, and it links to libncurses, which is already on the rescue disk. If interested, I will make an ebuild. The only disadvantage is that it doesn't support the cursor keys, but uses the 'hjlk' mapping. Wout.
See bug #2190 for an ebuild for levee
*** Bug 2235 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I also missed the lack of vi during and right after Gentoo installation, as several editing took place then. One reason because I started to use vi was that although pico and nano were very easy to learn they had very limited functionality, so I don't see how they are the only solution available in a distribution with the target audience that Gentoo has.
I agree. I was extremely shocked to find vi was missing. Trying to work my way through using nano was painfull and unnecessary. Anyone serious about unix has invested the time to learn enough vi to use it in emergencies, and on unfamiliar systems w/out their favorite editor of choice. I too vote that vi should be a part of the base distribution.
I could get away with nano if there was even _one_ good reason explained in the FAQ or install doc to include _only_ nano but this way it's just ridiculous. Nothing against newbie friendlyness even in gentoo, but alienate the users this was aimed to at first ? What chris quoted in his bug report was from the _first_ sentence in the "About Gentoo" doc!
*** Bug 3041 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I agree too. Vi should be the default editor.
I disagree. VI is a bit too hard for newbies to use. Nano could be kept and auto-aliased to "nano -w", or we could use jed- easy without the automatic word wrap, or we could include both nano and vi.
What is there to disagree with? Nano and vi are not mutually exclusive. This is like saying lynx or ftp can't be included because Mozilla is there. I couldn't believe vi wasn't there on the 16MB boot CD. I'm sure it will be in the next release... right?
Heh, i forgot to mention it here, but the 1.3b isos will include both Vim and nano..
vi is on the 1.4 cds, so if at some point in the future it gets lost, feel free to re-open and rip someone's head off ;)
Moving these so we can remove the "Install CD" component from "Gentoo Linux". I apologize to everyone for this spam, but according to the bugzilla developers, this is the only reasonable way to do this.
