[arch-dev-public] new vi/vim/gvim

[Aaron Griffin]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Tobias Kieslich <tobias at justdreams.de> wrote:
> 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.