Package: debian-policy
Version: 4.1.0.0
Policy 11.4 sayeth:
11.4. Editors and pagers
Some programs have the ability to launch an editor or pager
program to edit or display a text document. Since there are
lots of different editors and pagers available in the Debian
distribution, the system administrator and each user should
have the possibility to choose their preferred editor and pager.
In addition, every program should choose a good default
editor/pager if none is selected by the user or system
administrator.
Thus, every program that launches an editor or pager must use
the EDITOR or PAGER environment variable to determine the
editor or pager the user wishes to use. If these variables are
not set, the programs /usr/bin/editor and /usr/bin/pager
should be used, respectively.
If read strictly, this says that I must use "/usr/bin/editor" instead
of invoking "editor" from the $PATH. (I'm not sure I agree with that
interpretation, but it came up in https://bugs.debian.org/682347.)
Running "editor" from the $PATH instead of using that full path should
be perfectly acceptable and IMHO is a better behavior, since it allows
the user to put a custom editor in /usr/local/bin or $HOME/bin.
Could this say something like
not set, the commands "editor" and "pager" should be used,
respectively. These commands can be invoked explicitly (e.g.
as /usr/bin/editor), or through a $PATH search (e.g. as
editor).
?
