Bug#830580: Patch to install alternatives

[James McCoy]

On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 12:29:15PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 01:10:18PM -0400, James McCoy wrote:
> > Thanks for the patch!
> > 
> > On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 11:27:23PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> > > From 8d4641be71797ef7d54a3067f2c15cb374b73b16 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > > From: Josh Triplett <josh at joshtriplett.org>
> > > Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2016 23:21:37 -0700
> > > Subject: [PATCH] Install alternatives for ex, rvim, rview, vi, vim, view, and
> > >  vimdiff
> > 
> > I don't think it makes sense to install an alternative for vi.  Neovim
> > is explicitly dropping various "vi compatibility" pieces of
> > functionality.
> 
> Neovim is still an implementation of vi, and acts like vi; it just
> doesn't keep "bug-compatibility".  If you didn't have any other vi
> implementation installed, I think it still makes sense for "vi" to
> invoke nvim.

Ack.

> > Why are these alternatives 29 when editor is on-par with vim.basic at
> > 30?
> 
> I was trying to be conservative, to avoid surprising anyone who installs
> neovim to experiment with it but expects "vim" to have complete vim
> compatibility.

>From a quick experiment, update-alternatives preserves the existing
auto-selected alternative when another is installed at the same
priority.  If vim is already installed, it stays selected.  If neovim is
installed first and later vim, then neovim stays the selected
alternative.

Cheers,
-- 
James
GPG Key: 4096R/91BF BF4D 6956 BD5D F7B7  2D23 DFE6 91AE 331B A3DB