Where is vi?

PeterBell · 2015-04-21 11:25:28

Yesterday I did a pacstrap for base and base-devel on an x86_64 system. The vi editor was available in the newly constructed system. Today, I performed the same pacstrap and vi is nowhere to be seen.
How can I install vi into my system?

Lone_Wolf · 2015-04-21 11:28:54

Vi was replaced by vim-minimal , see
http://archlinux.2023198.n4.nabble.com/ … 04562.html

PeterBell · 2015-04-21 11:39:16

Ummm .... okay.

I've always relied on vi being available on every *nix system I've encountered, so this move surprises me somewhat!

Trilby · 2015-04-21 11:40:19

There does seem there may have been an oversight here, though. There are two separate issues here: vi's role in the live iso, and vi's role as a member of the base group. Vim-minimal has replaced vi in the former role, but vi has been removed from the base group without any flavor of vim replacing it. I doubt that is intended as - if I understand correctly - a basic POSIX system should be provided by base and either vi/vim could provided the editor requirement for that.

PeterBell · 2015-04-21 11:56:14

Trilby wrote:

There does seem there may have been an oversight here....

Especially when, in the current configuration, utilities such as visudo still expect to use vi.

This gives me the impression that this hasn't been properly thought through, and the ramifications have not been considered.

Trilby · 2015-04-21 12:26:28

I recall on one of the mailing lists that visudo was addressed. I'm not sure what the final choice was, but there were a number of ways to set visudo to use vim, or even have a vi symlink to vim. The absence of vim from the base group is the only suspicion of error I'd currently raise - lets not jump to conclusions on the rest.

(edit: the suspicion has been removed per the information below - there was no error, just an informed choice)

Last edited by Trilby (2015-04-21 13:36:55)

karol · 2015-04-21 12:32:54

PeterBell wrote:

Especially when, in the current configuration, utilities such as visudo still expect to use vi.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sudo#Using_visudo

Edit:

Trilby wrote:

The absence of vim from the base group is the only suspicion of error I'd currently raise - lets not jump to conclusions on the rest.

https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/a … 77720.html

Last edited by karol (2015-04-21 12:38:04)

PeterBell · 2015-04-21 12:47:03

karol wrote:

PeterBell wrote:
Especially when, in the current configuration, utilities such as visudo still expect to use vi.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sudo#Using_visudo

Yes, of course the editor setting can be changed. But what is the sense in distributing a default installation which calls for an editor which is no longer available?

Gusar · 2015-04-21 13:00:10

PeterBell wrote:

Yes, of course the editor setting can be changed. But what is the sense in distributing a default installation which calls for an editor which is no longer available?

https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/a … 24357.html <- That message shows that the devs are very well aware of the situation. It's possible the sudo package will be adjusted as described there, or maybe someone will need to open a bug requesting for it to happen.

In any case, this is a minor hiccup, while the tone of your posts seems very (too) aggressive to me, as if the devs did/are doing something seriously wrong. Maybe it's just me though, determining tone from a text medium is tricky.

nomorewindows · 2015-04-21 13:58:38

This just recently happened with some kde packages. Kalu showed them in the packages not found in AUR. This was momentary as packages such as kdeedu-kstars is now just kstars.

PeterBell · 2015-04-21 14:08:16

Gusar wrote:

... the tone of your posts seems very (too) aggressive to me ...

No aggression - simply surprise/confusion, after so many years of relying on vi - especially since it went awol between two pacstraps, around 12 hours apart and I was using the same .iso which does include vi.

I'm guessing that this suggests that nano should become the standard editor, since it is still included in the base distribution.

karol · 2015-04-21 20:17:46

PeterBell wrote:

I'm guessing that this suggests that nano should become the standard editor

Not necessarily: https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/a … 27117.html

jasonwryan · 2015-04-21 20:42:04

karol wrote:

PeterBell wrote:
I'm guessing that this suggests that nano should become the standard editor
Not necessarily: https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/a … 27117.html

But possibly https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/a … 27118.html

karol · 2015-04-22 18:16:46

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=ex-vi

jasonwryan · 2015-04-22 18:21:35

Vi is back: https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/a … 27133.html

# edit for clarity

EF on ML wrote:

Commit message with justification for the revert:
=================
r237918 | foutrelis | 2015-04-22 21:02:32 +0300 (Wed, 22 Apr 2015) | 15
lines
Bring back vi (FS#44604)
There was objection to switching the /usr/bin/vi editor fallback of
programs like visuo to /usr/bin/nano and the idea of not providing
/usr/bin/vi at all goes against POSIX.
Considering that dbscripts lack support for pushing split packages into
more than one repository, vim-minimal cannot be made available in [core]
without maintaining two copies of the PKGBUILD, which is something the
vim maintainer would rather not do (understandably so).
So, welcome back vi; I didn't miss you one bit.
(On the bright side, vim-minimal is included on the installation image.)
=================

thiagowfx · 2015-04-22 18:58:58

C'mon people, let's use a few quotes where possible, it is annoying to have to open several links just to read the post -- actually, this is a minor issue, but there were 4 links in a row :-P.

Curiously enough, I stumbled upon the same issue as OP yesterday, for the same reasons. I'm still not sure if there will be a 'vi' on /usr/bin or not; but if not, I think it would be prudent to create an announcement for this in the news page, just for the historical reasons of vi.

I personally don't mind using nano or installing vi{,m} on-demand in the live iso, but removing it looks like an unexpected change.

Gusar · 2015-04-22 19:46:25

The install ISO has vim-minimal, that won't change. But base and [core] now have vi again, instead of recompiling various packages to use nano as default.

Why hasn't anyone created a modern, small vi? vim is huge, the old vi and busybox vi aren't unicode aware and possibly have other issues (busybox vi is very nice actually, and has newbie-friendly defaults, but lack of unicode awareness is a problem). There's e3, an editor written entirely in assembly, that can work in various modes - vi, emacs, pico and a few others. It's quite cool and unicode aware! But somehow I doubt the devs would go for e3 as the vi provider in base and [core].

Last edited by Gusar (2015-04-22 19:48:34)

Roken · 2015-04-22 20:30:06

Link vi to vim in /usr/share - job done

How hard is it?

Last edited by Roken (2015-04-22 20:30:54)

Scimmia · 2015-04-22 20:36:17

The argument is more about size. vim-minimal + vim-runtime + gpm is nearlly 30MB, vi is 350KB.

karol · 2015-04-22 20:48:45

Arch has a history of messing around with vi / vim, this is just another chapter.

It's the wrong vi version, wrong python version, no ruby ssupport, no X clipboard support and whatnot:
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11413 Vi package is actually vim; vidiff does not work.
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/13109 vi/vim package organization
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/13239 [vi] change vi package name
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/13240 [vim] should have language interpeters as optdepends
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16177 [vim] python support
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/15449 gvim 7.2.218-1 not compiled with ruby
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16652 [vim] does not interface with the X11 clipboard
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16840 [vim] must depend on perl strictly
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/19245 [vim] PKGBUILD: compile --with-x=yes instead of --with-x=no
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/22612 [vim] The xterm_clipboard is not compiled, which prevents X11 clipboard
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/23683 VIM is Compiled Without the Python Interpreter
* https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/26557 Vim has not been compiled with support for Lua

Gusar · 2015-04-22 21:49:50

Roken wrote:

Link vi to vim in /usr/share - job done
How hard is it?

Quite. To do that, vim-minimal would need to be in [core]. But it can't be there, because the rest is in [extra] and it's not possible to put parts of a split package into different repos.

Scimmia · 2015-04-22 22:00:28

Since a base installation already pulls from Extra, that's not a very good argument IMO.

foutrelis · 2015-04-22 22:18:04

Scimmia wrote:

Since a base installation already pulls from Extra, that's not a very good argument IMO.

The seems to be an oversight and can (will?) be corrected by moving libaio to [core].

WorMzy · 2015-04-22 22:26:56

Personally I think we should get rid of all editors and just make people use shell redirection and sed. It'd improve our image as a newbie-unfriendly elitist distro, and would have the added benefit of being slightly more usable than vi.

jasonwryan · 2015-04-22 22:39:33

Sed is just a bloated ed (which is in core, as it happens)...

Arch Linux

#1 2015-04-21 11:25:28

Where is vi?

#2 2015-04-21 11:28:54

Re: Where is vi?

#3 2015-04-21 11:39:16

Re: Where is vi?

#4 2015-04-21 11:40:19

Re: Where is vi?

#5 2015-04-21 11:56:14

Re: Where is vi?

#6 2015-04-21 12:26:28

Re: Where is vi?

#7 2015-04-21 12:32:54

Re: Where is vi?

#8 2015-04-21 12:47:03

Re: Where is vi?

#9 2015-04-21 13:00:10

Re: Where is vi?

#10 2015-04-21 13:58:38

Re: Where is vi?

#11 2015-04-21 14:08:16

Re: Where is vi?

#12 2015-04-21 20:17:46

Re: Where is vi?

#13 2015-04-21 20:42:04

Re: Where is vi?

#14 2015-04-22 18:16:46

Re: Where is vi?

#15 2015-04-22 18:21:35

Re: Where is vi?

#16 2015-04-22 18:58:58

Re: Where is vi?

#17 2015-04-22 19:46:25

Re: Where is vi?

#18 2015-04-22 20:30:06

Re: Where is vi?

#19 2015-04-22 20:36:17

Re: Where is vi?

#20 2015-04-22 20:48:45

Re: Where is vi?

#21 2015-04-22 21:49:50

Re: Where is vi?

#22 2015-04-22 22:00:28

Re: Where is vi?

#23 2015-04-22 22:18:04

Re: Where is vi?

#24 2015-04-22 22:26:56

Re: Where is vi?

#25 2015-04-22 22:39:33

Re: Where is vi?

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