Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Polytropon free...@edvax.de writes: When Bill G. arrives at the pearly gate, ol' Pete won't ask him what he did do, instead send him to MICROS~1 C:\HELL.EXE with the advice to click on the devil to start the everlasting pain. :-) Brilliant!! atb Glyn ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Daniel Underwood wrote: How did The question of moving vi to /bin end up as two different conversations for me in gmail? Hello Daniel, When I did a 'Reply to All', the moderator blocked the posting claiming too high a number of recipients. I cancelled the posting, and resent it using 'Reply to Sender'. I don't know whether the original posting itself got through as well. -- Regards Manish Jain invalid.poin...@gmail.com +91-96500-10329 Laast year I kudn't spell Software Engineer. Now I are won. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
RE: The question of moving vi to /bin
Good to know, but I was just being a smart-a$$. I will have to try out WINE though, been reading about it lately.. -Original Message- From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of RW Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 10:21 PM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The question of moving vi to /bin On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:15:12 -0500 Gary Gatten ggat...@waddell.com wrote: I like M$ Notepad - is there a version of that for FBSD? Actually, there is. Wine implements it's own version of notepad. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org font size=1 div style='border:none;border-bottom:double windowtext 2.25pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in' /div This email is intended to be reviewed by only the intended recipient and may contain information that is privileged and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, use, dissemination, disclosure or copying of this email and its attachments, if any, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete this email from your system. /font ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Mon 29 Jun 2009 at 08:19:58 PDT Gary Gatten wrote: Good to know, but I was just being a smart-a$$. I will have to try out WINE though, been reading about it lately.. -Original Message- From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of RW Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2009 10:21 PM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The question of moving vi to /bin On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:15:12 -0500 Gary Gatten ggat...@waddell.com wrote: I like M$ Notepad - is there a version of that for FBSD? Actually, there is. Wine implements it's own version of notepad. Because it implements its own version of the multiline edit control, Notepad is just a thin wrapper around that, providing a main window to house the control and a menu to drive it. Wordpad is to the rich text control as Notepad is to the edit control. Probably (meaning I don't know it for a fact) they were both originally written as testbeds/demos for the controls, which are used throughout Windows. Kinda like the relationship between vi and curses, really -- except that vi was written first and then curses was abstracted from it. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:15:12 -0500, Gary Gatten ggat...@waddell.com wrote: I like M$ Notepad - is there a version of that for FBSD? You are on the wrong list. Correct your inner state of mind and try again. :-) No, seriously: Maybe gnotepad+ appeals to you? Actually the old edit from dos is sweet too Try the Midnight Commander's mcedit editor, it has some of the functionaliy, keyboard-usage-wise... -- Polytropon From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:23:17 -0700, Gary Kline kl...@thought.org wrote: what about j, k [down, up]. and h,l [left, right]? why reach over for the arrow keys! oh, and o, and O [open line below/Above], and \search and that's 97 and 44/100ths of what you'll ever need. Well, I'm not good at vi. As a lazy guy (TM) I honestly prefer ee, as long as the cursor keys work. If they don't, well, I have a vi keyboard reference in my extremely important documentation folder - and yes, it is a real folder, not a directory. :-) So if everything fails, there's still vi and the content of /rescue to get you back working. Maybe this is because vi scared me when using WEGA (which is the GDR's equivalent of UNIX System III, run on the P8000 multi-user workstation). Well, we were all young, many many years in the distant past. :-) ps: when bill j. dies and meets st. pete at the pearly gate, pete'll say: So what did you do-- And bill will say, I wrote vi. red-carpet is rolled out :_) When Bill G. arrives at the pearly gate, ol' Pete won't ask him what he did do, instead send him to MICROS~1 C:\HELL.EXE with the advice to click on the devil to start the everlasting pain. :-) -- Polytropon From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, On 26 June 2009 pm 14:01:02 Polytropon wrote: On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:23:17 -0700, Gary Kline kl...@thought.org wrote: have a vi keyboard reference in my extremely important documentation folder - and yes, it is a real folder, not a directory. :-) So if everything fails, there's still vi and the content of /rescue to get you back working. Maybe this is because vi scared me when using WEGA (which is the GDR's equivalent of UNIX System III, run on the P8000 was this the russian PDP-11? multi-user workstation). Well, we were all young, many many years in the distant past. :-) You want to say 'yesterday'? ps: when bill j. dies and meets st. pete at the pearly gate, pete'll say: So what did you do-- And bill will say, I wrote vi. red-carpet is rolled out :_) When Bill G. arrives at the pearly gate, ol' Pete won't ask him what he did do, instead send him to MICROS~1 C:\HELL.EXE with the advice to click on the devil to start the everlasting pain. :-) I do not think so. He will go directly to heaven. Why? He made all computer users pray that no data get lost when the machine freezes again. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 08:01:02AM +0200, Polytropon wrote: On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:23:17 -0700, Gary Kline kl...@thought.org wrote: what about j, k [down, up]. and h,l [left, right]? why reach over for the arrow keys! oh, and o, and O [open line below/Above], and \search and that's 97 and 44/100ths of what you'll ever need. Well, I'm not good at vi. As a lazy guy (TM) I honestly prefer ee, as long as the cursor keys work. If they don't, well, I have a vi keyboard reference in my extremely important documentation folder - and yes, it is a real folder, not a directory. :-) So if everything fails, there's still vi and the content of /rescue to get you back working. Maybe this is because vi scared me when using WEGA (which is the GDR's equivalent of UNIX System III, run on the P8000 multi-user workstation). Well, we were all young, many many years in the distant past. :-) Ah yes true words, never spoken, etc. And I had (past tensed) one of those reference cards ... come to think of it. There're still tricks of vi I don't know. Or, to be correct, nvi, which was said to be a feature for feature, bug for bug clone. Yes, i am a geek, just not an extremist:) ps: when bill j. dies and meets st. pete at the pearly gate, pete'll say: So what did you do-- And bill will say, I wrote vi. red-carpet is rolled out :_) When Bill G. arrives at the pearly gate, ol' Pete won't ask him what he did do, instead send him to MICROS~1 C:\HELL.EXE with the advice to click on the devil to start the everlasting pain. :-) (*Yes*!) LMAO. gary -- Polytropon From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... -- Gary Kline kl...@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org For FBSD list: http://transfinite.thought.org/slicejourney.php The 4.98a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:15:12 -0500 Gary Gatten ggat...@waddell.com wrote: I like M$ Notepad - is there a version of that for FBSD? Actually, there is. Wine implements it's own version of notepad. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, I agree that vi is nowhere as easy to use as ee. Since a lot of people seem to be happy with ee, why not make it available under /bin so that that there is an easy-to-use, readily-working editor always available, even if you are in single-user mode ? That in fact was the essence of this entire thread. The thing is /bin/ed and /rescue/vi have their unique problems and peculiarities. If at least there can be a general consensus that ee should be under /bin, a lot of people could possibly find it beneficial in emergencies. The problem again, I suspect, might be that moving ee to /bin would possibly need the terminal database to be kept under / directly, which goes against freebsd's obsession with a micro-minimalistic base. One solution might be to keep a pared-down version of the database that provides only for the most commonly used terminals to be placed under /, and single-user mode set up to use this database. Hi, I agree that vi is nowhere as easy to use as ee. Since a lot of people seem to be happy with ee, why not make it available under /bin so that that there is an easy-to-use, readily-working editor always available, even if you are in single-user mode ? That in fact was the essence of this entire thread. The thing is /bin/ed and /rescue/vi have their unique problems and peculiarities. If at least there can be a general consensus that ee should be under /bin, a lot of people could possibly find it beneficial in emergencies. The problem again, I suspect, might be that moving ee to /bin would possibly need the terminal database to be kept under / directly, which goes against freebsd's concept of a micro-minimalistic base. One solution might be to keep a pared-down version of the database that provides only for the most commonly used terminals placed under / and single-user mode set up to use this database. -- Regards Manish Jain invalid.poin...@gmail.com +91-96500-10329 Laast year I kudn't spell Software Engineer. Now I are won. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
2009/6/25 Gary Gatten ggat...@waddell.com: I like M$ Notepad - is there a version of that for FBSD? Actually the old edit from dos is sweet too I'll humour you... gedit is similar and better than notepad for BSD, but there's nothing like 'edit' (actually a stripped down QBasic) AFAIK. Maybe you should write one! Perhaps the closest thing there is ee. Chris -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in a mailing list? -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in a mailing list? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Editor in minimal system (was Re: The question of moving vi to /bin)
This whole thread only really got started because I questioned Manish Jain's assertion that there was no editor available in /bin. To summarise: There are several editors available ranging from ed (49604 bytes) and ee (60920 bytes) (both with two library dependencies) to emacs (in ports; 5992604 bytes and 50 library dependencies in my installation) and probably beyond. One of them, ed, is available in /bin and therefore in single-user mode. Two of them, ed and vi, are available in /rescue and therefore in single-user mode even when something horrible happens and libraries are broken (although /rescue/vi is currently slightly broken itself due to the termcap issue which is being fixed in -CURRENT and I hope will be MFC'd). Anyone who wants /usr/bin/vi available in single-user mode can install FreeBSD with one large partition; or mount /usr once in single-user mode. The original poster suggested that the fix for not having vi in /bin was not to have any editor at all in /rescue, which comprehensively misses the point of /rescue. The only argument that's been advanced for moving vi seems to be ``vi should be in /bin because that's how I want it''. I find that argument unconvincing, but it's not up to me. I'm open to a sensible argument, if anyone has one. Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Editor in minimal system (was Re: The question of moving vi to /bin)
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 09:59:28AM +0200, Jonathan McKeown wrote: This whole thread only really got started because I questioned Manish Jain's assertion that there was no editor available in /bin. To summarise: There are several editors available ranging from ed (49604 bytes) and ee (60920 bytes) (both with two library dependencies) to emacs (in ports; 5992604 bytes and 50 library dependencies in my installation) and probably beyond. One of them, ed, is available in /bin and therefore in single-user mode. Two of them, ed and vi, are available in /rescue and therefore in single-user mode even when something horrible happens and libraries are broken (although /rescue/vi is currently slightly broken itself due to the termcap issue which is being fixed in -CURRENT and I hope will be MFC'd). Anyone who wants /usr/bin/vi available in single-user mode can install FreeBSD with one large partition; or mount /usr once in single-user mode. The original poster suggested that the fix for not having vi in /bin was not to have any editor at all in /rescue, which comprehensively misses the point of /rescue. The only argument that's been advanced for moving vi seems to be ``vi should be in /bin because that's how I want it''. I find that argument unconvincing, but it's not up to me. I'm open to a sensible argument, if anyone has one. Jonathan What about making it be a build option? Or at least symlink the static vi in /rescue to /bin...? I mean we have 1.5TB drives now! 3700 blocks is a burp. A small burp. For that matter, why not have the option of moving the majority of /rescue to /bin? I've only had to use the rescue floppy a few times, but did so only because i needed grep and vi to edit /etc/fsck ... And major, irksome desl using cat and ed to look at that file. And a few others in /etc. gary -- Gary Kline kl...@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org For FBSD list: http://transfinite.thought.org/slicejourney.php The 4.98a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:40:50 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: On 26 June 2009 pm 14:01:02 Polytropon wrote: Maybe this is because vi scared me when using WEGA (which is the GDR's equivalent of UNIX System III, run on the P8000 was this the russian PDP-11? I'm not sure if there was a PDP-11 compatible system. Contruction mostly concentrated on IBM compatibles (and I don't mean PCs with that, of course). Maybe there's something USSR-special with a russian name (Iskra, Minsk, erm, no the Minsk wasn't a PDP-like...). There in fact was a system compatible to DEC's VAX architecture, the robotron K1840: http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/k1840.htm It did not only have software support for VAX (with its OS SVP1800), but as well for UNIX (with its OS MUTOS1800). As far as I know, the russians (i. e. the soviets) participated, like every country in the RGW, in manufacturing computers. From the USSR, especially processors were delivered, while other countries specialized on other fields, such as the GDR on magnetic tape units. The P8000 was manufactured by EAW in Berlin in the GDR. It was a UNIX System III multi-user workstation environment, used mostly for application programming. http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/p8000.htm http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/p8000compact.htm I still own such a system and would like to get it working some day (one P8000 and one P8000 compact). So much for today's history lesson. :-) multi-user workstation). Well, we were all young, many many years in the distant past. :-) You want to say 'yesterday'? No. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. :-) Being into that computer stuff makes you feel old, even when you're young, because you've already seen everything... When Bill G. arrives at the pearly gate, ol' Pete won't ask him what he did do, instead send him to MICROS~1 C:\HELL.EXE with the advice to click on the devil to start the everlasting pain. :-) I do not think so. He will go directly to heaven. Why? He made all computer users pray that no data get lost when the machine freezes again. And finally, he invented God, the Heaven, the Hell (delivered in small packages called Windows), the universe, life and everything. Children get educated that way, at least in today's german schools. :-) -- Polytropon From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, On 27 June 2009 am 07:08:01 Polytropon wrote: On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:40:50 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: On 26 June 2009 pm 14:01:02 Polytropon wrote: Maybe this is because vi scared me when using WEGA (which is the GDR's equivalent of UNIX System III, run on the P8000 was this the russian PDP-11? I'm not sure if there was a PDP-11 compatible system. Contruction mostly concentrated on IBM compatibles (and I don't mean PCs with that, of course). Maybe there's something USSR-special with a russian name (Iskra, Minsk, erm, no the Minsk wasn't a PDP-like...). there was a PDP copy available but it is not mentioned on this site: http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/k1840.ht m And finally, he invented God, the Heaven, the Hell (delivered in small packages called Windows), the universe, life and everything. Children get educated that way, at least in today's german schools. :-) A real bad development, also here. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
That's a very good suggestion. But let's take into mind that we do need the most advanced and modern MICROS~1 technology, so FreeBSD should include a pirated copy of Windows 7 in order to run the latest and most expensive pirated copy of Office, programmed in Java, running through Flash. With music. And dancing puppies. Hah! I'll have to use this paragraph. Hilarious. :) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, On 25 June 2009 pm 13:03:01 Manish Jain wrote: If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. requirements of being interactive. That's one reason. Secondly, how many times does an average commandline user even think of using ed when he needs to edit a file, even in the extreme case where there are no alternatives ? isn't there ee in the base system? Till the improvements are in place, we need the alternative of having vi under /bin rather than /usr/bin. I do not see any reason to have a monster like vi there. Actually, it surprises me to what extent the core of the FreeBSD community is enamoured with this idea of a micro-minimalistic base, in which it is practically impossible to do anything except run fsck. Matters don't stop there. Seeing the limitations of this approach, the community churns up wierd workarounds like /rescue/vi, when all that was needed was shift vi from /usr. You talk about the need for compliance Only people who want to use vi do this. The rest is happy with ee. But I guess my words are of no use when the people who matter just won't listen. So I give any hopes in this regard. I hope that they do not listen. It would be even better to have an editor like joe in /bin than anything like vi. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such, at least since BSD 4.2. Way back then there were three main editors, ex, vi, and ed. ed goes back at least as far as the Bell Labs 6th Edition (PDP-11), where it was the only editor in the distribution. ex and vi (and termcap, without which there would be no vi) were written later, at UC Berkeley. If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi. But if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you used ex. And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies. More like, ed was the original Unix editor; ex and vi presumably were inspired, at least in part, by a desire to improve on ed's limitations. I doubt I'm the only one who muttered about the bother of horsing around with ed, back when there was nothing else. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
John L. Templer wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Manish Jain wrote: If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. Any Unix tool has to clearly fall either under the category of non-interactive (grep, sed, ex) or interactive (vi, wget, sysinstall). Oh really? Many Unix programs have traditionally had both a command line mode of operation and an interactive mode, and that's still pretty much still true. Usually when you run a program you put arguments on the command line, and the program does what those arguments tell it to do. But for many programs, if you run them with no arguments they run in interactive mode and wait for the user to issue commands telling the program what to do. The case of non-interactive tools is simple : just do what you are told on the commandline and exit. For interactive tools, at a minimum, the application has to be show what data it is working on and what it does with the data when the user presses a key (or a series of them). ed was never meant to be non-interactive, and it does not fulfil the basic requirements of being interactive. That's one reason. Secondly, how many times does an average commandline user even think of using ed when he needs to edit a file, even in the extreme case where there are no alternatives ? ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such, at least since BSD 4.2. Way back then there were three main editors, ex, vi, and ed. If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi. But if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you used ex. And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies. ed is an interactive program because the user interacts with it. You give it command, it does something, you give it some more commands, it does more stuff, etc. Interactive does not mean screen based. Till the improvements are in place, we need the alternative of having vi under /bin rather than /usr/bin. Actually, it surprises me to what extent the core of the FreeBSD community is enamoured with this idea of a micro-minimalistic base, in which it is practically impossible to do anything except run fsck. Matters don't stop there. Seeing the limitations of this approach, the community churns up wierd workarounds like /rescue/vi, when all that was needed was shift vi from /usr. You talk about the need for compliance with old hardware and embedded systems to save a few kilos. How old is the hardware that you have in mind ? The oldest system running FreeBSD I know of is a 1997 Pentium with a 2 GB disk, and even that can easily withstand the change I am suggesting. Machines older than that are actually DEAD and don't have to be factored in. As for embedded systems, the primary target of FreeBSD is servers, workstations and *tops. The embedded world hasn't survived riding on FreeBSD, nor the other way round. So from the viewpoint of the greatest good of the largest number, over-indulging a mindset fixed around minimizing the base only leads to degradation, not improvement. Getting to boast of a 900K / won't do any good when people are thinking of having decent firepower (even while in single-user mode) and its ease of use. It's not just keeping the core system small, it's ensuring that if the disk containing /usr fails to mount, then you still have enough of the system to fix the problem. Admittedly this isn't as much of a concern now, what with rescue disks and CDs with bootable live systems, but it's still nice to have. John L. Templer -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkpDDM0ACgkQjkAlo11skePG4wCgjq4plp71Yattn34UP9YIyv4k VagAoKDcLGVPQBxae6FABGa5hLI9w4gM =+Ed7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- Hi John, I really think you need to go through Unix's history again to get your facts anywhere close to reality. -- Regards Manish Jain invalid.poin...@gmail.com +91-96500-10329 Laast year I kudn't spell Software Engineer. Now I are won. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 01:36:31AM -0400, John L. Templer typed: ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such, at least since BSD 4.2. Way back then there were three main editors, ex, vi, and ed. If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi. But if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you used ex. And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies. ed is an interactive program because the user interacts with it. You give it command, it does something, you give it some more commands, it does more stuff, etc. Interactive does not mean screen based. ed can be used very well non-interactively. e.g. a script made by diff -e can be piped to it. Ruben ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Thu, 25 Jun 2009, Manish Jain wrote: If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. Any Unix tool has to clearly fall either under the category of non-interactive (grep, sed, ex) or interactive (vi, wget, sysinstall). The case of non-interactive tools is simple : just do what you are told on the commandline and exit. For interactive tools, at a minimum, the application has to be show what data it is working on and what it does with the data when the user presses a key (or a series of them). ed was never meant to be non-interactive, and it does not fulfil the basic requirements of being interactive. That's one reason. Secondly, how many times does an average commandline user even think of using ed when he needs to edit a file, even in the extreme case where there are no alternatives ? There have been some recent changes: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194628 http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194628 that suggest that this problem is being addressed. Till the improvements are in place, we need the alternative of having vi under /bin rather than /usr/bin. Actually, it surprises me to what extent the core of the FreeBSD community is enamoured with this idea of a micro-minimalistic base, in which it is practically impossible to do anything except run fsck. Matters don't stop there. Seeing the limitations of this approach, the community churns up wierd workarounds like /rescue/vi, when all that was needed was shift vi from /usr. You talk about the need for compliance with old hardware and embedded systems to save a few kilos. How old is the hardware that you have in mind ? The oldest system running FreeBSD I know of is a 1997 Pentium with a 2 GB disk, and even that can easily withstand the change I am suggesting. Machines older than that are actually DEAD and don't have to be factored in. As for embedded systems, the primary target of FreeBSD is servers, workstations and *tops. The embedded world hasn't survived riding on FreeBSD, nor the other way round. So from the viewpoint of the greatest good of the largest number, over-indulging a mindset fixed around minimizing the base only leads to degradation, not improvement. Getting to boast of a 900K / won't do any good when people are thinking of having decent firepower (even while in single-user mode) and its ease of use. But I guess my words are of no use when the people who matter just won't listen. So I give any hopes in this regard. Maybe you're right, maybe not. 20 years ago, I've written and edited voluminous fortran code on a silly rs232 terminal using ed. So, it is possible, and one can learn basics of ed in less than a hour. Don't you think so? Best regards Konrad Heuer GWDG, Am Fassberg, 37077 Goettingen, Germany, kheu...@gwdg.de ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Ruben de Groot wrote: On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 01:36:31AM -0400, John L. Templer typed: ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such, at least since BSD 4.2. Way back then there were three main editors, ex, vi, and ed. If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi. But if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you used ex. And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies. ed is an interactive program because the user interacts with it. You give it command, it does something, you give it some more commands, it does more stuff, etc. Interactive does not mean screen based. ed can be used very well non-interactively. e.g. a script made by diff -e can be piped to it. Ruben What I meant was the primary usage. Of course, there are many tools (ed included) which will allow non-interactive usage, and still others which can be tweaked or forced into that behaviour. The point about ed is that it does not live up to the needs of its primary mode. Somebody mentioned something about getting multi-line replacement functionality from ed that is not possible with sed. If only the gentleman would go through the documentation for a recent version of sed, he could save himself from a lot of further pain. This following link was posted a few days earlier from freebsd-questions itself : http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html There probably isn't much to compare between freebsd and cygwin, but cygwin has dropped ed (and afaik only ed) from its base distribution not for nothing. Maybe they were concerned about the bloat factor, and for good reason in ed's case. -- Regards Manish Jain invalid.poin...@gmail.com +91-96500-10329 Laast year I kudn't spell Software Engineer. Now I are won. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
2009/6/24 Manish Jain invalid.poin...@gmail.com: everyone has hundreds of GB's on the disk No. No they don't. Please hang up and try again. If you need to make a collect call, please dial zero to speak with an oper- ator. -- -- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:20:42 -0400, ill...@gmail.com ill...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/6/24 Manish Jain invalid.poin...@gmail.com: everyone has hundreds of GB's on the disk No. No they don't. Please hang up and try again. If you need to make a collect call, please dial zero to speak with an oper- ator. Dial all the numbers altogether to talk to the fat guy with the big hard disk. :-) -- Polytropon From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 01:28:54PM +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote: Hi, On 25 June 2009 pm 13:03:01 Manish Jain wrote: If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. requirements of being interactive. That's one reason. Secondly, how many times does an average commandline user even think of using ed when he needs to edit a file, even in the extreme case where there are no alternatives ? isn't there ee in the base system? ee is in /usr/bin, just like vi. Till the improvements are in place, we need the alternative of having vi under /bin rather than /usr/bin. I do not see any reason to have a monster like vi there. I agree, but for different reasons. Though I love vi(m), I realize that not everyone does. If the point of all of this is to provide an editor which can be used by just about anyone in the event that /usr is unavailable, vi will not fit the bill any more than ex will. ee is a better start, and it's conveniently 1/5 the size of vi. But I guess my words are of no use when the people who matter just won't listen. So I give any hopes in this regard. I hope that they do not listen. It would be even better to have an editor like joe in /bin than anything like vi. Certainly. Erik ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
snip 20 years ago, I've written and edited voluminous fortran code on a silly rs232 terminal using ed. So, it is possible, and one can learn basics of ed in less than a hour. Don't you think so? Not when editors like ee and vi are available and more spoken of in today's topics. And I know it was mentioned, but the OP seems to have ignored or refused to acknowledge /rescue/vi which is in the / partition as it's defaulted partitioned. Why are we still talking about /usr/bin/vi (dynamically linked) when /rescue/vi (statically linked) is both in / and would work for us? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
I like M$ Notepad - is there a version of that for FBSD? Actually the old edit from dos is sweet too - Original Message - From: owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org owner-freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org To: Konrad Heuer kheu...@gwdg.de Cc: Manish Jain invalid.poin...@gmail.com; bf1...@googlemail.com bf1...@googlemail.com; FreeBSD Mailing List freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sent: Thu Jun 25 15:50:01 2009 Subject: Re: The question of moving vi to /bin snip 20 years ago, I've written and edited voluminous fortran code on a silly rs232 terminal using ed. So, it is possible, and one can learn basics of ed in less than a hour. Don't you think so? Not when editors like ee and vi are available and more spoken of in today's topics. And I know it was mentioned, but the OP seems to have ignored or refused to acknowledge /rescue/vi which is in the / partition as it's defaulted partitioned. Why are we still talking about /usr/bin/vi (dynamically linked) when /rescue/vi (statically linked) is both in / and would work for us? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org font size=1 div style='border:none;border-bottom:double windowtext 2.25pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in' /div This email is intended to be reviewed by only the intended recipient and may contain information that is privileged and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, use, dissemination, disclosure or copying of this email and its attachments, if any, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete this email from your system. /font ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, On 25 June 2009 pm 19:13:14 Konrad Heuer wrote: On Thu, 25 Jun 2009, Manish Jain wrote: Maybe you're right, maybe not. 20 years ago, I've written and edited voluminous fortran code on a silly rs232 terminal using ed. So, it is possible, and one I do not believe you. This must have been 30 years back. Didn't come CP/M 1.0 not even with a better editor? ed? edlin? Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Ho, On 26 June 2009 am 04:32:31 Erik Osterholm wrote: On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 01:28:54PM +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote: On 25 June 2009 pm 13:03:01 Manish Jain wrote: If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're isn't there ee in the base system? ee is in /usr/bin, just like vi. my mistake. To be honest, I never have had a problem with /usr since disks are large enough to have all on only one. Of course, those days, when it was two or more disks in a system and /usr died, it could have helped. It would be even better to have an editor like joe in /bin than anything like vi. Certainly. Ok, then let us support joe. But isn't there emacs in the ports too? Erich Erik PS: according to the spelling, you originate from further north than me ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Ruben de Groot wrote: On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 01:36:31AM -0400, John L. Templer typed: ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such, at least since BSD 4.2. Way back then there were three main editors, ex, vi, and ed. If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi. But if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you used ex. And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies. ed is an interactive program because the user interacts with it. You give it command, it does something, you give it some more commands, it does more stuff, etc. Interactive does not mean screen based. ed can be used very well non-interactively. e.g. a script made by diff -e can be piped to it. Ruben Yes, that's true. Perhaps I misspoke myself. ed can be used both in interactive mode and in a script, which is what I called command line mode. However it's not correct to say that ed is not an interactive program, as it definitely can be used interactively. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkpEHekACgkQjkAlo11skePV5ACcCZaOsxztyNyWIlNBuTMuL/nu FAYAnRiKFxy+nezfkA0I9Q6Nou9Sc2Ve =SEx6 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:20:19 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: On 25 June 2009 pm 19:13:14 Konrad Heuer wrote: Maybe you're right, maybe not. 20 years ago, I've written and edited voluminous fortran code on a silly rs232 terminal using ed. So, it is possible, and one I do not believe you. This must have been 30 years back. As far as 16 years back, VT220/VT320 terminals were in wide use in universities. Some of us learned our first regexp stuff by reading the source of ed(1) and typing small programs in those terminals. vi(1) was available for a long time before 1993, but this doesn't mean other editors had died out by then :) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:24:13 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: To be honest, I never have had a problem with /usr since disks are large enough to have all on only one. Mostly, partitioning according to directory structures has nothing to do with disk space, but with intention. There are many many arguments pro and contra partitioning. It's a matter of intention. It would be even better to have an editor like joe in /bin than anything like vi. Certainly. Ok, then let us support joe. Or the Midnight Commander's editor, mcedit. :-) The good thing about vi - yes, there is such a thing - is the fact that it even works completely under the weirdest circumstances, e. g. if you are on a terminal line that does not have cursor keys or function keys, then you can still use the full power of vi, as long as you know how to master it, but that's true for anything in the UNIX world. But isn't there emacs in the ports too? Sure, let's take emacs into the OS, as well as any other editor one could imagine. And because most people like graphical applications, let's include OpenOffice for editing configuration files in maintenance mode. :-) -- Polytropon From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 per...@pluto.rain.com wrote: ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such, at least since BSD 4.2. Way back then there were three main editors, ex, vi, and ed. ed goes back at least as far as the Bell Labs 6th Edition (PDP-11), where it was the only editor in the distribution. ex and vi (and termcap, without which there would be no vi) were written later, at UC Berkeley. If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi. But if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you used ex. And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies. More like, ed was the original Unix editor; ex and vi presumably were inspired, at least in part, by a desire to improve on ed's limitations. I doubt I'm the only one who muttered about the bother of horsing around with ed, back when there was nothing else. Ah, I didn't know that. When I started using Unix (on a BSD 4.2 system) vi was the editor of choice. It wasn't until much later that I learned about the ATT side of Unix. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkpEH+IACgkQjkAlo11skeOOrwCbBrOYlc7+bHDOgKvHiLedCQof w3AAniMByMDTGAIEbWzTd+oTNVgB6VoU =0dSg -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, On 26 June 2009 am 09:06:49 Giorgos Keramidas wrote: On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:20:19 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: On 25 June 2009 pm 19:13:14 Konrad Heuer wrote: Maybe you're right, maybe not. 20 years ago, I've written and edited voluminous fortran code on a silly rs232 terminal using ed. So, it is possible, and one I do not believe you. This must have been 30 years back. As far as 16 years back, VT220/VT320 terminals were in wide use in universities. Some of us learned our first regexp stuff by not only there, but ed was not the editor of choice even those days anymore. reading the source of ed(1) and typing small programs in those terminals. vi(1) was available for a long time before 1993, but this doesn't mean other editors had died out by then :) If I remember right, I used something like ed only in the Seventies. A collegue programmed then even a WordStar clone for RSX to have a nice editor. Of course, only for VT-100 Terminals. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, On 26 June 2009 am 09:07:00 Polytropon wrote: On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:24:13 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: To be honest, I never have had a problem with /usr since disks are large enough to have all on only one. Mostly, partitioning according to directory structures has nothing to do with disk space, but with intention. There are many many arguments pro and contra partitioning. It's a matter of intention. this is not what I mean. I wanted to say, as long as the boot disk come up, I also have /usr available when I have the space to have it all on the same disk. That /usr does not have to be on the same disk, is a different question. If I do this, I will also be aware of the consequences. It would be even better to have an editor like joe in /bin than anything like vi. Certainly. Ok, then let us support joe. Or the Midnight Commander's editor, mcedit. :-) The good thing about vi - yes, there is such a thing - is the fact that it even works completely under the weirdest circumstances, e. g. if you are on a terminal line that does not have cursor keys or function keys, then you can still use the full power of vi, as long as you know how to master it, but that's true for anything in the UNIX world. Aren't all - or at least most - of the Unix editors like this? But isn't there emacs in the ports too? Sure, let's take emacs into the OS, as well as any other editor one could imagine. And because most people like graphical applications, let's include OpenOffice for editing configuration files in maintenance mode. :-) Yes, this is the idea of the ideas. But why don't we take Microsoft Word running under wine? I mean, if we strike, we should have a real strike. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:50:31 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: On 26 June 2009 am 09:06:49 Giorgos Keramidas wrote: As far as 16 years back, VT220/VT320 terminals were in wide use in universities. Some of us learned our first regexp stuff by not only there, but ed was not the editor of choice even those days anymore. Heh, true. I only later found out though, when a local admin hit me in the head with a SunOS vi manual. I've lost contact with him a long time ago, but boy am I glad he pointed me at those SunOS manuals... If I remember right, I used something like ed only in the Seventies. Ouch! :-) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:55:48 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: this is not what I mean. I wanted to say, as long as the boot disk come up, I also have /usr available when I have the space to have it all on the same disk. I see. The fact that /usr isn't available after booting in maintenance mode (SUM) is often important for recovery purposes. The OS leaves it to the admin to take such important decisions. :-) The good thing about vi - yes, there is such a thing - is the fact that it even works completely under the weirdest circumstances, e. g. if you are on a terminal line that does not have cursor keys or function keys, then you can still use the full power of vi, as long as you know how to master it, but that's true for anything in the UNIX world. Aren't all - or at least most - of the Unix editors like this? I think most of them are. But, for example, I don't think that the mcedit (Midnight Commander's editor) is very usable without cursor and function keys... But isn't there emacs in the ports too? Sure, let's take emacs into the OS, as well as any other editor one could imagine. And because most people like graphical applications, let's include OpenOffice for editing configuration files in maintenance mode. :-) Yes, this is the idea of the ideas. But why don't we take Microsoft Word running under wine? I mean, if we strike, we should have a real strike. That's a very good suggestion. But let's take into mind that we do need the most advanced and modern MICROS~1 technology, so FreeBSD should include a pirated copy of Windows 7 in order to run the latest and most expensive pirated copy of Office, programmed in Java, running through Flash. With music. And dancing puppies. If - then real. :-) -- Polytropon From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, On 26 June 2009 am 10:02:30 Polytropon wrote: On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:55:48 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: this is not what I mean. I wanted to say, as long as the boot disk come up, I also have /usr available when I have the space to have it all on the same disk. I see. The fact that /usr isn't available after booting in maintenance mode (SUM) is often important for recovery purposes. The OS leaves it to the admin to take such important decisions. :-) yes, but then he or she knows why certain things on certain places unlike those day when it has had to be on those places. Yes, this is the idea of the ideas. But why don't we take Microsoft Word running under wine? I mean, if we strike, we should have a real strike. That's a very good suggestion. But let's take into mind that we do need the most advanced and modern MICROS~1 technology, so FreeBSD should include a pirated copy of Windows 7 in order to run the latest and most expensive pirated copy of Office, programmed in Java, running through Flash. With music. And dancing puppies. If - then real. :-) Yes, this is the best suggestion up to date. Polytropon From Magdeburg, Germany Solltest Du jetzt nicht schlafen? Hier scheint wenigstens die Sonne. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 09:50:31AM +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote: Hi, On 26 June 2009 am 09:06:49 Giorgos Keramidas wrote: On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:20:19 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: On 25 June 2009 pm 19:13:14 Konrad Heuer wrote: Maybe you're right, maybe not. 20 years ago, I've written and edited voluminous fortran code on a silly rs232 terminal using ed. So, it is possible, and one I do not believe you. This must have been 30 years back. As far as 16 years back, VT220/VT320 terminals were in wide use in universities. Some of us learned our first regexp stuff by not only there, but ed was not the editor of choice even those days anymore. reading the source of ed(1) and typing small programs in those terminals. vi(1) was available for a long time before 1993, but this doesn't mean other editors had died out by then :) If I remember right, I used something like ed only in the Seventies. A collegue programmed then even a WordStar clone for RSX to have a nice editor. Of course, only for VT-100 Terminals. This is interesting. I learned vi on an ADM-3A, late-70's. And, *YES*, it is in /rescue! :-D Would not just a symlink work on build? Or since it's 3700 blocks, why not default build in in /bin too? I mean, come on, you guys... . gary Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- Gary Kline kl...@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org For FBSD list: http://transfinite.thought.org/slicejourney.php The 4.98a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
Hi, On 26 June 2009 pm 12:19:32 Gary Kline wrote: On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 09:50:31AM +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote: On 26 June 2009 am 09:06:49 Giorgos Keramidas wrote: On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:20:19 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: On 25 June 2009 pm 19:13:14 Konrad Heuer wrote: Of course, only for VT-100 Terminals. This is interesting. I learned vi on an ADM-3A, late-70's. this was the dream terminal of mine during those days. It has had a decent keyboard with an acceptable screen. I really forgot the names of the terminals I have had to use before. Later I could move to Esprit 6310 models. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 09:09:56PM -0400, John L. Templer wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 per...@pluto.rain.com wrote: ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such, at least since BSD 4.2. Way back then there were three main editors, ex, vi, and ed. ed goes back at least as far as the Bell Labs 6th Edition (PDP-11), where it was the only editor in the distribution. ex and vi (and termcap, without which there would be no vi) were written later, at UC Berkeley. If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi. But if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you used ex. And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies. More like, ed was the original Unix editor; ex and vi presumably were inspired, at least in part, by a desire to improve on ed's limitations. I doubt I'm the only one who muttered about the bother of horsing around with ed, back when there was nothing else. Ah, I didn't know that. When I started using Unix (on a BSD 4.2 system) vi was the editor of choice. It wasn't until much later that I learned about the ATT side of Unix. Back in 1978, Bill Joy used to walk around with a fan-fold printout of vi and/or csh. He'd pull up a chair and sit at a term a few feet away. (This was when I was first learning FORTRAN-IV and [ick] Pascal. ) He probably fixed dozrns of bugs that way, walking thru the code. --Yes, I'm sure he was trying to impress the girls too. (About a third of the intro programming classes were female, then. And not many uglies, either! (I'm not sexist or anything, just telling it like it was:) Today I'm hearing there are fewer women students into programming... dunno why.) Ken Arnold hacked the first curses and termcap. Anyway, this is the BErkeley side of Unix. ed was my first editor on the ADM. It was the next thing to magic. vi blew it out of the water. -- Gary Kline kl...@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org For FBSD list: http://transfinite.thought.org/slicejourney.php The 4.98a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:31:37PM +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote: Hi, On 26 June 2009 pm 12:19:32 Gary Kline wrote: On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 09:50:31AM +0800, Erich Dollansky wrote: On 26 June 2009 am 09:06:49 Giorgos Keramidas wrote: On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:20:19 +0800, Erich Dollansky er...@apsara.com.sg wrote: On 25 June 2009 pm 19:13:14 Konrad Heuer wrote: Of course, only for VT-100 Terminals. This is interesting. I learned vi on an ADM-3A, late-70's. this was the dream terminal of mine during those days. It has had a decent keyboard with an acceptable screen. I really forgot the names of the terminals I have had to use before. my first was just the 3, the 3A had the addressible cursor so vi could move around. the whole thing was one unit; kybd builtin to the screen/CRT. i thought the ADM-3A was severely cool:_) gary ps: yes, i is a nerd... . Later I could move to Esprit 6310 models. Erich -- Gary Kline kl...@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org For FBSD list: http://transfinite.thought.org/slicejourney.php The 4.98a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
The question of moving vi to /bin
On Tuesday 23 June 2009 15:41:48 Manish Jain wrote:
I hope the next release will address these problems, as well as a pretty
reasonable request from me much earlier to move vi from /usr/bin to
/bin. Even in single-user mode, you almost always need an editor.
Which is why you have ed(1) - both in /bin and in /rescue - and /rescue/vi
(although that needs a bit of tweaking due to the /etc/termcap problem).
Bear in mind that /usr/bin/vi is over 300K, compared to the whole of /bin
which is ~950K (if you avoid double-counting entries like /bin/csh
and /bin/tcsh which are hardlinks to the same file), so you need to convince
people who think /bin should stay small to let it grow by a third to save
people learning ed(1).
Jonathan
Hello Jonathan,
About ed first. I might annoy a few people (which would gladden me in
this particular case), but ed was just one of Ken Thompson's nightmares
which he managed to reproduce in Unix with great precision. By no
stretch of imagination would it qualify as an editor, because an editor
can meaningfully edit only what it can first show. And ed has never had
anything to show. A modern operating system like FreeBSD should really
be kicking ed out of the distribution completely : bad ideas don't have
to be necessarily perpetuated just for the sake of compliance with the
original concept of Unix.
and /rescue/vi
(although that needs a bit of tweaking due to the /etc/termcap problem)
That's the whole problem of /rescue/vi. When you suddenly find yourself
in single-user mode, the last thing you want to do is realise that
tweaking is needed for something which should work normally just when
you need it, and quickly too.
Bear in mind that /usr/bin/vi is over 300K
Actually, the cost is more than 300K because the terminal database would
have to be put into / too. But why are we talking about a few hundred
kilos for such a basic utility as vi in times when everyone has hundreds
of GB's on the disk, and the / partition itself is 512 MB by default.
The BSD concept of having vi under /usr originated when resources were
less by a factor of thousands (= (100 MB disks), = (8 MB physical RAM)
and so on). When we are well past those kind of constraints, the concept
needs an rethink.
Actually, there is an even more radical update that I would have loved
FreeBSD to have initiated. Instead, the credit has gone to Microsoft.
The simple thing is when a system has multiple gigabytes of RAM, the OS
should be able give an option to the user of completely doing away with
swapping and force all the action in real, physical memory instead.
This latter idea might still sound a bit far-fetched, but at least
dumping ed and /rescue/vi to pave way for /bin/vi is certainly more than
a workable idea. Till that happens, people like me might be forced to do
outlandish things like copying /usr/local/bin/{bash,vim} to /bin and
their associated libraries to /lib. I really mean copying, not moving -
which could create problems with port/library upgrades at a later date.
It works, is safe and easy, and requires no tweaking.
Hope there are some takers.
--
Regards
Manish Jain
invalid.poin...@gmail.com
+91-96500-10329
Laast year I kudn't spell Software Engineer. Now I are won.
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Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Tuesday 23 June 2009 15:41:48 Manish Jain wrote: ... About ed first. I might annoy a few people (which would gladden me in this particular case), but ed was just one of Ken Thompson's nightmares which he managed to reproduce in Unix with great precision. By no stretch of imagination would it qualify as an editor, because an editor can meaningfully edit only what it can first show. And ed has never had anything to show. A modern operating system like FreeBSD should really be kicking ed out of the distribution completely : bad ideas don't have to be necessarily perpetuated just for the sake of compliance with the original concept of Unix. If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. ... That's the whole problem of /rescue/vi. When you suddenly find yourself in single-user mode, the last thing you want to do is realise that tweaking is needed for something which should work normally just when you need it, and quickly too. Yes. But there have been some recent changes: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194628 that suggest that this problem is being addressed. ... But why are we talking about a few hundred kilos for such a basic utility as vi in times when everyone has hundreds of GB's on the disk, and the / partition itself is 512 MB by default. The BSD concept of having vi under /usr originated when resources were less by a factor of thousands (= (100 MB disks), = (8 MB physical RAM) and so on). When we are well past those kind of constraints, the concept needs an rethink. No, we're not. A lot of people are still using old hardware, or embedded hardware, where efficiency in space and computational effort are still important, and will remain so for a while. Please don't encourage bloat. ... Actually, there is an even more radical update that I would have loved FreeBSD to have initiated. Instead, the credit has gone to Microsoft. The simple thing is when a system has multiple gigabytes of RAM, the OS should be able give an option to the user of completely doing away with swapping and force all the action in real, physical memory instead. ??? Who is giving them that credit? This isn't new. You already have some control over swapping via several oids: vm.swap_enabled vm.disable_swapspace_pageouts vm.defer_swapspace_pageouts vm.swap_idle_enabled vm.swap_idle_threshold1 vm.swap_idle_threshold2 etc. See, for example, tuning(7). These have been around for ages (well, at least since June 1996). You can also build your kernel with: options NO_SWAPPING which takes precedence over these settings. That option has been around even longer. Linux has corresponding features, although they didn't always work well on older kernels. More recently, kib@ has just committed some changes that allow for finer control of swapping, and, in the opposite direction, anonymous memory, in his overcommit patches: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194766 http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194767 http://people.freebsd.org/~kib/overcommit/ b. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 06:13:49AM -0700, b. f. wrote: On Tuesday 23 June 2009 15:41:48 Manish Jain wrote: About ed first. I might annoy a few people (which would gladden me in this particular case), but ed was just one of Ken Thompson's nightmares which he managed to reproduce in Unix with great precision. By no stretch of imagination would it qualify as an editor, because an editor can meaningfully edit only what it can first show. And ed has never had anything to show. A modern operating system like FreeBSD should really be kicking ed out of the distribution completely : bad ideas don't have to be necessarily perpetuated just for the sake of compliance with the original concept of Unix. If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. Please don't touch/remove ed(1)! * It's still very useful on non-curses/termcap capable terminals like raw serial lines etc. * It's also very useful in batch/script mode, as there are some multi-line text processing problems that you can't tackle with sed(1) alone, and where awk(1) or even perl, python etc.. are overkill. -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
2009/6/24 cpghost cpgh...@cordula.ws: On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 06:13:49AM -0700, b. f. wrote: On Tuesday 23 June 2009 15:41:48 Manish Jain wrote: About ed first. I might annoy a few people (which would gladden me in this particular case), but ed was just one of Ken Thompson's nightmares which he managed to reproduce in Unix with great precision. By no stretch of imagination would it qualify as an editor, because an editor can meaningfully edit only what it can first show. And ed has never had anything to show. A modern operating system like FreeBSD should really be kicking ed out of the distribution completely : bad ideas don't have to be necessarily perpetuated just for the sake of compliance with the original concept of Unix. If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. Please don't touch/remove ed(1)! * It's still very useful on non-curses/termcap capable terminals like raw serial lines etc. * It's also very useful in batch/script mode, as there are some multi-line text processing problems that you can't tackle with sed(1) alone, and where awk(1) or even perl, python etc.. are overkill. -cpghost. I may be mistaken, but isn't ed required for POSIX compliance? Chris -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in a mailing list? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Wednesday 24 June 2009 12:59:13 Manish Jain wrote: About ed first. I might annoy a few people (which would gladden me in this particular case), but ed was just one of Ken Thompson's nightmares which he managed to reproduce in Unix with great precision. By no stretch of imagination would it qualify as an editor, because an editor can meaningfully edit only what it can first show. And ed has never had anything to show. A modern operating system like FreeBSD should really be kicking ed out of the distribution completely : bad ideas don't have to be necessarily perpetuated just for the sake of compliance with the original concept of Unix. Hold on. I didn't claim it was a *good* editor - I was reacting to your suggestion that /bin didn't contain an editor at all. ed(1)'s interface is certainly minimal, but it's easy enough to list lines in the file you're editing, contrary to what you seem to be saying - to list every line of the file, try the two characters , l. However, if you want a more visual editor, perhaps /usr/bin/ee (which is just over 10K bigger than /bin/ed) would do? You also suggested doing away with ed and /rescue/vi altogether. You may not need statically-linked tools very often, but when you do need them, you *REALLY* need them. Don't suggest throwing them away without thinking through the implications. Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 04:22:19PM +0200, Jonathan McKeown wrote: You also suggested doing away with ed and /rescue/vi altogether. You may not need statically-linked tools very often, but when you do need them, you *REALLY* need them. Don't suggest throwing them away without thinking through the implications. I think the intent was to do away with /bin/ed and /rescue/vi in favor of /bin/vi -- not to do away with /bin/ed and /rescue/vi and replace them with nothing. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] Quoth Alan Kay: I invented the term 'Object-Oriented', and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind. pgpN8iyxVmGlT.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 06:13:49AM -0700, b. f. wrote: On Tuesday 23 June 2009 15:41:48 Manish Jain wrote: That's the whole problem of /rescue/vi. When you suddenly find yourself in single-user mode, the last thing you want to do is realise that tweaking is needed for something which should work normally just when you need it, and quickly too. Yes. But there have been some recent changes: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194628 that suggest that this problem is being addressed. That's definitely good news. There isn't much point in putting something in /rescue that won't work when other filesystems won't mount. But why are we talking about a few hundred kilos for such a basic utility as vi in times when everyone has hundreds of GB's on the disk, and the / partition itself is 512 MB by default. The BSD concept of having vi under /usr originated when resources were less by a factor of thousands (= (100 MB disks), = (8 MB physical RAM) and so on). When we are well past those kind of constraints, the concept needs an rethink. No, we're not. A lot of people are still using old hardware, or embedded hardware, where efficiency in space and computational effort are still important, and will remain so for a while. Please don't encourage bloat. I sympathize with the desire to keep bloat down for the minimal default case. Embedded systems were the first examples that came to mind for cases where having vi in /bin might not be ideal. On the other hand, I don't see any reason to refuse to offer an optional install of /bin/vi for those who prefer it and don't want to have to brute-force install it by manually copying it, thus eliminating relatively simple and easy upgrades when security concerns demand it. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] Quoth Jon Postel, RFC 761: [B]e conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. pgp9tOWGypNtz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:13:49 -0700 b. f. bf1...@googlemail.com wrote: ??? Who is giving them that credit? This isn't new. You already have some control over swapping via several oids: vm.swap_enabled vm.disable_swapspace_pageouts vm.defer_swapspace_pageouts vm.swap_idle_enabled vm.swap_idle_threshold1 vm.swap_idle_threshold2 etc. See, for example, tuning(7). These have been around for ages (well, at least since June 1996). You can also build your kernel with: options NO_SWAPPING which takes precedence over these settings. That option has been around even longer. Linux has corresponding features, although they didn't always work well on older kernels. It looks like the best explanation of NO_SWAPPING is http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=1067315+0+archive/2003/freebsd-current/20030413.freebsd-current I found it after attempting to trim a powerpc kernel to see just how much I could leave out - it looks like it's not possible to leave out support for swapping. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. Any Unix tool has to clearly fall either under the category of non-interactive (grep, sed, ex) or interactive (vi, wget, sysinstall). The case of non-interactive tools is simple : just do what you are told on the commandline and exit. For interactive tools, at a minimum, the application has to be show what data it is working on and what it does with the data when the user presses a key (or a series of them). ed was never meant to be non-interactive, and it does not fulfil the basic requirements of being interactive. That's one reason. Secondly, how many times does an average commandline user even think of using ed when he needs to edit a file, even in the extreme case where there are no alternatives ? There have been some recent changes: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194628 http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/194628 that suggest that this problem is being addressed. Till the improvements are in place, we need the alternative of having vi under /bin rather than /usr/bin. Actually, it surprises me to what extent the core of the FreeBSD community is enamoured with this idea of a micro-minimalistic base, in which it is practically impossible to do anything except run fsck. Matters don't stop there. Seeing the limitations of this approach, the community churns up wierd workarounds like /rescue/vi, when all that was needed was shift vi from /usr. You talk about the need for compliance with old hardware and embedded systems to save a few kilos. How old is the hardware that you have in mind ? The oldest system running FreeBSD I know of is a 1997 Pentium with a 2 GB disk, and even that can easily withstand the change I am suggesting. Machines older than that are actually DEAD and don't have to be factored in. As for embedded systems, the primary target of FreeBSD is servers, workstations and *tops. The embedded world hasn't survived riding on FreeBSD, nor the other way round. So from the viewpoint of the greatest good of the largest number, over-indulging a mindset fixed around minimizing the base only leads to degradation, not improvement. Getting to boast of a 900K / won't do any good when people are thinking of having decent firepower (even while in single-user mode) and its ease of use. But I guess my words are of no use when the people who matter just won't listen. So I give any hopes in this regard. -- Regards Manish Jain invalid.poin...@gmail.com +91-96500-10329 Laast year I kudn't spell Software Engineer. Now I are won. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: The question of moving vi to /bin
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Manish Jain wrote: If you want to make a case for replacing ed(1), you're going to have to come up with some concrete reasons for doing so, not just make a (long and hyperbolic) statement that you don't like it. Any Unix tool has to clearly fall either under the category of non-interactive (grep, sed, ex) or interactive (vi, wget, sysinstall). Oh really? Many Unix programs have traditionally had both a command line mode of operation and an interactive mode, and that's still pretty much still true. Usually when you run a program you put arguments on the command line, and the program does what those arguments tell it to do. But for many programs, if you run them with no arguments they run in interactive mode and wait for the user to issue commands telling the program what to do. The case of non-interactive tools is simple : just do what you are told on the commandline and exit. For interactive tools, at a minimum, the application has to be show what data it is working on and what it does with the data when the user presses a key (or a series of them). ed was never meant to be non-interactive, and it does not fulfil the basic requirements of being interactive. That's one reason. Secondly, how many times does an average commandline user even think of using ed when he needs to edit a file, even in the extreme case where there are no alternatives ? ed is an interactive program, and it has always been considered as such, at least since BSD 4.2. Way back then there were three main editors, ex, vi, and ed. If you had a nice video terminal then you used vi. But if you were stuck using a hard copy terminal like a Decwriter, then you used ex. And ed was the simplified (dumbed down) editor for newbies. ed is an interactive program because the user interacts with it. You give it command, it does something, you give it some more commands, it does more stuff, etc. Interactive does not mean screen based. Till the improvements are in place, we need the alternative of having vi under /bin rather than /usr/bin. Actually, it surprises me to what extent the core of the FreeBSD community is enamoured with this idea of a micro-minimalistic base, in which it is practically impossible to do anything except run fsck. Matters don't stop there. Seeing the limitations of this approach, the community churns up wierd workarounds like /rescue/vi, when all that was needed was shift vi from /usr. You talk about the need for compliance with old hardware and embedded systems to save a few kilos. How old is the hardware that you have in mind ? The oldest system running FreeBSD I know of is a 1997 Pentium with a 2 GB disk, and even that can easily withstand the change I am suggesting. Machines older than that are actually DEAD and don't have to be factored in. As for embedded systems, the primary target of FreeBSD is servers, workstations and *tops. The embedded world hasn't survived riding on FreeBSD, nor the other way round. So from the viewpoint of the greatest good of the largest number, over-indulging a mindset fixed around minimizing the base only leads to degradation, not improvement. Getting to boast of a 900K / won't do any good when people are thinking of having decent firepower (even while in single-user mode) and its ease of use. It's not just keeping the core system small, it's ensuring that if the disk containing /usr fails to mount, then you still have enough of the system to fix the problem. Admittedly this isn't as much of a concern now, what with rescue disks and CDs with bootable live systems, but it's still nice to have. John L. Templer -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkpDDM0ACgkQjkAlo11skePG4wCgjq4plp71Yattn34UP9YIyv4k VagAoKDcLGVPQBxae6FABGa5hLI9w4gM =+Ed7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
