Hi, 5 days have passed. There are exactly 8 packages in [core] that falls back on vi. === visudo === People can either run visudo like this: # EDITOR=vim visudo Or this could be added to /etc/sudoers (possibly by default): Defaults editor=/usr/bin/vim This can be configured by the user, or changed in the sudo package. Both methods work, and vi is not needed in either case. === cronie and glibc === The same goes for crontab. This works fine: EDITOR=vim crontab -e In order to set the default editor for crontab at compile time, _PATH_VI has to be set correctly in glibc. Here's the relevant code from src/pathnames.h in cronie: #if defined(_PATH_VI) # define EDITOR _PATH_VI #else # define EDITOR "/usr/ucb/vi" #endif For changing the default editor (_PATH_VI) to vim in glibc, just add this line to the build() function: sed -i 's:/vi:/vim:' sysdeps/generic/paths.h sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/paths.h === less and util-linux === These tries to start an editor when the "v" key is pressed. They both respect EDITOR and VISUAL but falls back on vi. (Is less really needed in [core], when more is supplied by util-linux? It seems a bit redundant). The fallback editor for less can be changed at compile time by adding the --with-editor flag: ./configure --with-editor=vim For the more utility in the util-linux package, set the fallback editor to vim by adding this line to the build() function: sed -i 's/"vi"\t/"vim"\t/' text-utils/more.c === bash === bashbug that comes with bash falls back on vi. Add this line to the build() function to change this to vim: sed -i 's/\([^a-zA-Z]\)vi/\1vim/' support/bashbug.sh For all of the changes for all of the above packages, I've rebuilt the packages and tested the functionality by unsetting EDITOR and VISUAL and removing /usr/bin/vi. === hairloom-mailx === In the build() function in the PKGBUILD, add: sed -i 's:"vi":"vim:' edit.c === shadow === Set the define DEFAULT_EDITOR to "vim" when compiling. I know that patching files with sed isn't really "The Arch Way" (even though a large numbers of packages do this), so if the remaining argument is that the switch from vi to vim has to come from upstream, I'm willing to submit patches/bug reports for all of the above that needs changes in the sourcecode (preferably without "vi" being hardcoded). === In summary === * All packages should respect the EDITOR or VISUAL environment variables (or at least _PATH_VI), so users can select whichever editor they like. * It's fully possible to change the fallback editor for all [core] packages to be vim instead of vi. * Switching from vi to vim should be unproblematic. +1 for dropping vi from [core] and including vim on the install medium instead. -- Sincerely, Alexander Rødseth xyproto / TU