tag 528494 help thanks #528494 raised the idea of having vim-tiny (the default vi-like editor on a base install) provide /bin/vi so that it would be accessible in situations where /usr isn't available. At first glance, I naïvely figured this would be an easy change. Of course, this wasn't the case so I'd like to get some feedback on the proper approach for this since this use case is actually something I've intended on doing since vim-tiny became Priority: important.
We currently have 8 source packages[0] building binary packages which provide vi in some form. All except elvis-tiny use the alternatives system to provide /usr/bin/vi. Elvis-tiny ships /bin/vi which is a small binary implementing its own sort of alternatives functionality[1]. The problem here is that I can't simply have vim-tiny ship /bin/vi partly due to elvis-tiny but primarily due to the alternatives system rightly not supporting a provided alternative changing location depending on which of the available alternatives is active. This would require a separate alternative, which is sub-optimal because it leaves the possibility for different behavior depending on the order of the system directories in the user's $PATH, as well as a naming conflict if /usr/bin is symlinked to /bin. Having vim-tiny simply ship /bin/vi and not use the alternatives system runs into similar problems. Thoughts? Suggestions? [0] - Felipe Augusto van de Wiel (faw) <[email protected]> levee Debian Vim Maintainers <[email protected]> vim Pierre Habouzit <[email protected]> vim (U) Teruyuki Morimura <[email protected]> jvim Jan Christoph Nordholz <[email protected]> nvi Brendan O'Dea <[email protected]> vile (U) Miquel van Smoornburg <[email protected]> elvis-tiny Paul van Tilburg <[email protected]> vile James Vega <[email protected]> vim (U) Colin Watson <[email protected]> vigor Paweł Więcek <[email protected]> e3 [1] - See debian/wrapper.c at <http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/debianonly/view/elvis-tiny/1.4-22> -- James GPG Key: 1024D/61326D40 2003-09-02 James Vega <[email protected]>
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