On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Tobias Kieslich
Hi guys,
just thought I'll let you know that the vi/vim/gvim layout will change again. After some slightly heated discussion and some thinking, I came to the conclusion that we could benefit from some different layout. I'll spare you all the reasons, here is some reading if you are really into it: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/13109 http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/13239 http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/13240
The new layout is pretty much settled: nvi/core, provides vi,ex and view binary, really tiny vim/extra, only perl support, provides runtime, no X, no whistles gvim/extra, perl,python+ruby and gtk2, depends on vim, replaces the vim binary(as symlink) on install so your terminal vim is more powerful
Benefits: - changes of (n)vi in core don't stall vim updates in extra - no vi runtime in core cuts down the install size (about 8MB compressed, 28 deflated) - we have a truely lightweight vim, it's something people really seem to want
things left to figure out:
I really, really hope the gvim package provides a binary that can be started as vim and runs in a terminal on a computer with no X/gtk2 installed ... I doubt it though. The reason is that I like to provide a fully scriptable vim for sysadmins that requires no X/GTK. Otherwise I could build the vim package with perl AND python support. It's not a big deal but it bumps the binary size from 1.5 MB to 4.5 ... that pretty big.
What if we have the gvim package optdepend on gtk and the like? "Install these for GUI support" ? I dunno if that would work, but it's an idea.