On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 5:12 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 12:38 PM, Patrice Dumas
<pertusus(a)free.fr> wrote:
> This is in order to always have a fallback. Anybody can use anything as
> EDITOR, but one has to have a default. vi is not a bad choice, it is
> POSIX, unless I am not recalling correctly, and it is small.
Should all possible fallbacks be hard requirements? Isn't it better to
have a number of competing packages provide an editor and provide a
virtual editor provides, have one of those installed editors set as
the default system editor via the EDITOR variable and then have all
packages which need an editor require the virtual editor provides
instead of a specific editor?
That way anyone can build a spin or do an install using any
appropriate available editor package which provides the editor virtual
provides as policy and tastes dictate.
-jef
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Hmm, sounds familiar... oh, right, the alternatives man page.
It is possible for several programs fulfilling the same or similar
functions to be installed on a single system at the same time. For
example, many systems have several text editors installed at once.
This gives choice to the users of a system, allowing each to use a dif-
ferent editor, if desired, but makes it difficult for a program to make
a good choice of editor to invoke if the user has not specified a par-
ticular preference.
The alternatives system aims to solve this problem.
jerry
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