Bug#784268: vim-tiny should provide vim alternative

James McCoy jamessan at debian.org
Wed May 6 04:06:02 UTC 2015


On Tue, May 05, 2015 at 02:09:14PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Mon, May 04, 2015 at 08:56:05PM -0400, James McCoy wrote:
> > True.  I should add some more detail there.
> 
> That I think would help reduce confusion.

This is the new description I have committed:

Description: Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version
 Vim is an almost compatible version of the UNIX editor Vi.
 .
 This package contains a minimal version of vim compiled with no GUI and
 a small subset of features. This package's primary purpose is to
 provide the vi binary for base installations.
 .
 If a more featureful build of Vim is wanted, try one of the following
 packages: vim, vim-nox, vim-athena, vim-gtk, or vim-gnome.

> I really wish to have a way to just install packages
> and have things work well.  Sure most systems are not tight enough on
> disk space that full vim iS a problem, but some smaller systems it can
> become relevant.

I'll give some thought to making vim-runtime a Recommends instead of a
Depends for the other Vim packages.  I need to determine what impact
that would have, but would that be a viable alternative for you?

> > Everyone has vim-tiny installed by default.  The only reason the package
> > was created was to provide the vi binary for the base image, as expected
> > on a Unix system.
> 
> I thought it was created to provide a smaller vim, and only later took
> over the job of providing vi.  I thought something else used to do that
> job in Debian in the past.  Like nvi or elvis or something.

Yes, nvi used to fill this role.  Looking back at the discussion (hey,
you were involved back then too), the re-creation of vim-tiny and
discussion around replacing nvi happened at the same time.  Once
vim-tiny was in a testable state, the question was raised about whether
it should be part of base.

Cheers,
-- 
James
GPG Key: 4096R/331BA3DB 2011-12-05 James McCoy <jamessan at debian.org>



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