On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 10:54, Andrei Thorp wrote:

Hello, fellow Archers.

Recently, I had a question about Vim, so I went to the #vim channel in IRC. I was doing something that should be working, but it wasn't. Surprisingly, the question came up, "Are you on Arch?"

Turns out that several of the peolpe I most respect in the #vim IRC channel are very unhappy with the quality of Arch's Vim package. One even (jokingly?) asked if they could officially not support Arch in the channel, which I found somewhat alarming. I suggested that we should instead help improve the Arch package.

I hate to pick on people, but according to the generally kind folks on IRC, the Vim package for Arch has quite a few issues, and the maintainer hasn't addressed some outstanding bugs in quite a long while.

As some of you may know, James Vega (jamessan) is an outstanding Vim user and the Debian package maintainer for Vim. I asked him to send me what he saw as the problems with the Arch package, and he was kind enough to send along some suggestions. They are attached in this forward.

Thank you,

-Andrei Thorp

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Vega Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 2:29 AM Subject: Arch's Vim failings To: garoth@gmail.com

Andrei,

Thanks for being receptive to trying to address the issues in Arch's Vim packaging.  Below are the major points that stand out.

1) gvim package: Shipping an /etc/gvimrc which, due to the order that   Vim loads rc files, overrides any settings in the user's ~/.vimrc.   Considering that some users make the conscious decision to keep all   their settings in their ~/.vimrc instead of using both ~/.vimrc and   ~/.gvimrc, this is at the very least annoying.  More in depth   discussion is contained in the nearly year old, unfixed bug[0] about   this issue.

2) vi package: The package is built such that the resulting vi binary   reads its config from the completely non-standard ~/.virc.   Presumably this is to allow different configurations for the   different feature-sets avaiable in vi vs. vim packages.  Fortunately,   Vim has methods to deal with this already such as being able to check   what name was used to invoke Vim[1] and explicitly checking for   feature support[2].

3) vi, vim, and gvim packages: Explicitly building Vim with $VIMRUNTIME   == $VIM by specifying "--with-global-runtime=/usr/share/vim" to   configure.  This doesn't need to be specified to configure as it will   be set to the correct directory on its own.  If they insist on   specifying it, the directory should be /usr/share/vim/vimXY (where XY   is Vim's version number -- 72 for current Vim).

  This manifests various problems, the most noticeable being that the   'runtimepath' option in Vim has /usr/share/vim listed twice, thus   causing runtime files to be sourced twice and causing duplicate   information when using common scripting methods for discovering files   in the runtimepath[3].

-- James GPG Key: 1024D/61326D40 2003-09-02 James Vega

[0] - http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10303 [1] - if v:progname == 'vi' [2] - if has('cscope') [3] - globpath(&rtp, 'colors/*')

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I don't have a whole lot to add to this, except that it seems like a good idea to confer with the vim developers to raise the quality of the package. I would file a bug report on the Arch tracker. (Also sending to arch-general, so this gets more exposure)

Thanks for sending it along, Dae. -AT On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Kessia 'even' Pinheiro wrote:

Hi,

I had that problem too, i asked for something in #vim channel and they only ridicularize vim package from Arch. I tried talk with Tobias about the vim upgrade for support ruby1.9, but he are so far from fix it, looking for problems which isnt important, in my vision. VI package are with 65 patch, unless the oficial project are with more than 100! I think it's a problem from arch package, but we need know why it's so problematic for vim users dont like the package layout.

thanks

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Andrei Thorp wrote:

...

Hello, fellow Archers.

Recently, I had a question about Vim, so I went to the #vim channel in IRC. I was doing something that should be working, but it wasn't. Surprisingly, the question came up, "Are you on Arch?"

Turns out that several of the peolpe I most respect in the #vim IRC channel are very unhappy with the quality of Arch's Vim package. One even (jokingly?) asked if they could officially not support Arch in the channel, which I found somewhat alarming. I suggested that we should instead help improve the Arch package.

I hate to pick on people, but according to the generally kind folks on IRC, the Vim package for Arch has quite a few issues, and the maintainer hasn't addressed some outstanding bugs in quite a long while.

As some of you may know, James Vega (jamessan) is an outstanding Vim user and the Debian package maintainer for Vim. I asked him to send me what he saw as the problems with the Arch package, and he was kind enough to send along some suggestions. They are attached in this forward.

Thank you,

-Andrei Thorp

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Vega Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 2:29 AM Subject: Arch's Vim failings To: garoth@gmail.com

Andrei,

Thanks for being receptive to trying to address the issues in Arch's Vim packaging.  Below are the major points that stand out.

1) gvim package: Shipping an /etc/gvimrc which, due to the order that   Vim loads rc files, overrides any settings in the user's ~/.vimrc.   Considering that some users make the conscious decision to keep all   their settings in their ~/.vimrc instead of using both ~/.vimrc and   ~/.gvimrc, this is at the very least annoying.  More in depth   discussion is contained in the nearly year old, unfixed bug[0] about   this issue.

2) vi package: The package is built such that the resulting vi binary   reads its config from the completely non-standard ~/.virc.   Presumably this is to allow different configurations for the   different feature-sets avaiable in vi vs. vim packages.  Fortunately,   Vim has methods to deal with this already such as being able to check   what name was used to invoke Vim[1] and explicitly checking for   feature support[2].

3) vi, vim, and gvim packages: Explicitly building Vim with $VIMRUNTIME   == $VIM by specifying "--with-global-runtime=/usr/share/vim" to   configure.  This doesn't need to be specified to configure as it will   be set to the correct directory on its own.  If they insist on   specifying it, the directory should be /usr/share/vim/vimXY (where XY   is Vim's version number -- 72 for current Vim).

  This manifests various problems, the most noticeable being that the   'runtimepath' option in Vim has /usr/share/vim listed twice, thus   causing runtime files to be sourced twice and causing duplicate   information when using common scripting methods for discovering files   in the runtimepath[3].

-- James GPG Key: 1024D/61326D40 2003-09-02 James Vega

[0] - http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10303 [1] - if v:progname == 'vi' [2] - if has('cscope') [3] - globpath(&rtp, 'colors/*')

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-- Kessia Pinheiro Computer Science Student - Brazil, UFBa Linux System Administrator Arch Linux Trusted User Linux User #389695 http://even.archlinux-br.org --- X Fórum Internacional Software Livre - fisl10 24 a 27 de junho de 2009 PUCRS - Porto Alegre - Brasil

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Andrei Thorp wrote:

Hello, fellow Archers.

Recently, I had a question about Vim, so I went to the #vim channel in IRC. I was doing something that should be working, but it wasn't. Surprisingly, the question came up, "Are you on Arch?"

Turns out that several of the peolpe I most respect in the #vim IRC channel are very unhappy with the quality of Arch's Vim package. One even (jokingly?) asked if they could officially not support Arch in the channel, which I found somewhat alarming. I suggested that we should instead help improve the Arch package.

I hate to pick on people, but according to the generally kind folks on IRC, the Vim package for Arch has quite a few issues, and the maintainer hasn't addressed some outstanding bugs in quite a long while.

As some of you may know, James Vega (jamessan) is an outstanding Vim user and the Debian package maintainer for Vim. I asked him to send me what he saw as the problems with the Arch package, and he was kind enough to send along some suggestions. They are attached in this forward.

Thank you,

-Andrei Thorp

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Vega Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 2:29 AM Subject: Arch's Vim failings To: garoth@gmail.com

Andrei,

Thanks for being receptive to trying to address the issues in Arch's Vim packaging.  Below are the major points that stand out.

1) gvim package: Shipping an /etc/gvimrc which, due to the order that   Vim loads rc files, overrides any settings in the user's ~/.vimrc.   Considering that some users make the conscious decision to keep all   their settings in their ~/.vimrc instead of using both ~/.vimrc and   ~/.gvimrc, this is at the very least annoying.  More in depth   discussion is contained in the nearly year old, unfixed bug[0] about   this issue.

2) vi package: The package is built such that the resulting vi binary   reads its config from the completely non-standard ~/.virc.   Presumably this is to allow different configurations for the   different feature-sets avaiable in vi vs. vim packages.  Fortunately,   Vim has methods to deal with this already such as being able to check   what name was used to invoke Vim[1] and explicitly checking for   feature support[2].

3) vi, vim, and gvim packages: Explicitly building Vim with $VIMRUNTIME   == $VIM by specifying "--with-global-runtime=/usr/share/vim" to   configure.  This doesn't need to be specified to configure as it will   be set to the correct directory on its own.  If they insist on   specifying it, the directory should be /usr/share/vim/vimXY (where XY   is Vim's version number -- 72 for current Vim).

  This manifests various problems, the most noticeable being that the   'runtimepath' option in Vim has /usr/share/vim listed twice, thus   causing runtime files to be sourced twice and causing duplicate   information when using common scripting methods for discovering files   in the runtimepath[3].

[0] - http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10303 [1] - if v:progname == 'vi' [2] - if has('cscope') [3] - globpath(&rtp, 'colors/*')

Thanks for sending this along. We're more than willing to fix and work through problems that upstream has with the way we package software - as we always say, we try to stay as close to upstream as possible. So, couple of solutions I'd like to suggest: The reason the vi package is... well, "jacked up", is because we needed a small version to stick in our base package set, without a lot of features. I guess this would be like vim-tiny on Debian. What we could do is simply ship nvi instead, for that purpose, and stick with only two packages, vim and gvim. That would help things greatly. Is not shipping a global /etc/gvimrc the norm? If so, we could do that, and it would solve some annoyances I myself experienced (though I rarely use gvim). Regarding the runtimepath, that is a good point that scripts are sourced twice. Definitely a bug and we should fix this.

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Daenyth Blank wrote:

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:35, Aaron Griffin wrote:

...

<snip> What we could do is simply ship nvi instead, for that purpose, and stick with only two packages, vim and gvim. That would help things greatly. <snip>

+1

I just realized this was on the aur-general list. Silly place for this discussion. Can we move this to the bug tracker?

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 7:44 PM, Andrei Thorp wrote:

It's been mentioned to me that several bugs are open around these issues, and if this indeed the case, I believe it valuable to bring attention to them -- a mailing list cannot hurt.

Well, at the very least, I'm sure the AUR mailing list is the wrong place for this. But discussion on the bug tracker centralizes the facts, so I don't have to go hunting around 4 different mailing lists, forum posts, and things like that.

1) gvim package: Shipping an /etc/gvimrc which, due to the order that   Vim loads rc files, overrides any settings in the user's ~/.vimrc.   Considering that some users make the conscious decision to keep all   their settings in their ~/.vimrc instead of using both ~/.vimrc and   ~/.gvimrc, this is at the very least annoying.  More in depth   discussion is contained in the nearly year old, unfixed bug[0] about   this issue. I got rid of gvimrc in etc, I still wonder thought why they would have such a file upstream. Also virc is gone. Since we won't ship a vim

Hi, I was reaaly busy lately so I wasn't able to push tha changes I made locally. based vi package anymore.

2) vi package: The package is built such that the resulting vi binary   reads its config from the completely non-standard ~/.virc.   Presumably this is to allow different configurations for the   different feature-sets avaiable in vi vs. vim packages.  Fortunately,   Vim has methods to deal with this already such as being able to check   what name was used to invoke Vim[1] and explicitly checking for   feature support[2].

vi will be besad on nvi. that has lot's of advantages: - smaller for the iso - no waiting on testing that stalls vim and gvim - vi and vim are separated

3) vi, vim, and gvim packages: Explicitly building Vim with $VIMRUNTIME   == $VIM by specifying "--with-global-runtime=/usr/share/vim" to   configure.  This doesn't need to be specified to configure as it will   be set to the correct directory on its own.  If they insist on   specifying it, the directory should be /usr/share/vim/vimXY (where XY   is Vim's version number -- 72 for current Vim).

  This manifests various problems, the most noticeable being that the   'runtimepath' option in Vim has /usr/share/vim listed twice, thus   causing runtime files to be sourced twice and causing duplicate   information when using common scripting methods for discovering files   in the runtimepath[3].

I was not aware of the double loading, a testbuild showed me that it is easy to build both packages (vim/gvim) without the path specified. The idea behind specifying was that gvim and vim use the same runtime but only one package ships it. So being explicit instead of implicit seemed like a good idea to me. Anyway, that will be gone as well in the new layout. Hopefully tonight I can push them to testing. For the update people will be forced to remove the /usr/bin/vim and I think the /usr/bin/rview symlink manually. I tried to find a way around that, but no dice. -T

Hi! On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Tobias Kieslich wrote:

Hi,

       I was reaaly busy lately so I wasn't able to push tha changes I made locally. I got rid of gvimrc in etc, I still wonder thought why they would have such a file upstream. Also virc is gone. Since we won't ship a vim based vi package anymore.

Why not?

vi will be besad on nvi. that has lot's of advantages: - smaller for the iso - no waiting on testing that stalls vim and gvim - vi and vim are separated

Why base vi on nvi? nvi aren't updated (on website) since 4/14/01. The last version of vi was based on vim and its a bit different for compiling options only. I think this is fine for most of users. I think in vi like a vim without X improvements, so, why not still with vi based on vim? Maybe you can provide nvi in a different package, which can provide vi, i dont know.

I was not aware of the double loading, a testbuild showed me that it is easy to build both packages (vim/gvim) without the path specified. The idea behind specifying was that gvim and vim use the same runtime but only one package ships it. So being explicit instead of implicit seemed like a good idea to me. Anyway, that will be gone as well in the new layout.

I understand the python idea here about explicit is better than explicit, but vim dont need that, really.

Hopefully tonight I can push them to testing. For the update people will be forced to remove the /usr/bin/vim and I think the /usr/bin/rview symlink manually. I tried to find a way around that, but no dice.

       -T

We are waiting until that... Well, for not be so long, I made some packages for vi/vim/gvim with ruby1.9, for that I made a patch for vim (sent for vim_dev today) and uploaded for ArchLinux-BR repository [repo.archlinux-br.org]. I uploaded the packages with the PKGBUILD's on my home [http://even.archlinux-br.org/things/arch/packages]. For that I solve some bugs from flyspray[#13937 and #12440] and also the questions in the main of this thread. If you have any doubts, please reply me. -- Kessia Pinheiro Computer Science Student - Brazil, UFBa Linux System Administrator Arch Linux Trusted User Linux User #389695 http://even.archlinux-br.org --- X Fórum Internacional Software Livre - fisl10 24 a 27 de junho de 2009 PUCRS - Porto Alegre - Brasil