[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] Drop VI from [core] (was Re: Winter Cleanup of [community])

[Dave Reisner]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Paul Gideon Dann <pdgiddie at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thursday 24 Jan 2013 11:05:22 Stéphane Gaudreault wrote:
> > +1 to drop vi. I cannot imagine why someone would want to use this crap
> ...
> >
> > We already have nano in [core], so I think that vim could stay in
> > [extra] (do we really need 2 text editors in [core] ?).
>
> Vi is the standard UNIX text-editor.  Many admins rely on the fact that vi
> is
> available everywhere.  It really should be in core.
>
> Also, I know you might be referring to "plain vi", which is a completely
> different beast to Vim, but the latter (which provides "vi" too) has a
> *huge*
> userbase.  Calling it crap is just bizarre...
>
> Paul
>

Incorrect -- ed is the standard unix editor.

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

More seriously, POSIX says vi is optional for us:

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/vi.html

Please remember that dropping it from [core] makes it in no way any less
available.

I've no problems with moving vi as long as it doesn't disappear from the
install media. It's useful to have around long enough until you can pacman
-S vim.