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Re: RFC: Replacing vim-tiny with nano in essential packages



On 2020-03-16 12:42 +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Mar 16, Thomas Pircher <thp+debian@p5r.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Would you consider nvi as an alternative to vim-tiny? It is quite small
> Maintainer: Debian QA Group <packages@qa.debian.org>
> Installed-Size: 1.605 kB
> 
> I think that busybox still wins.

If we are thinking about minimal editors, zile is a good candidate: no
deps, remarkably small and functional. It has become my default
'minimal useful editor' for installs and chroots.  It's emacs keys
rather than vi keys, I don't know if that's better or worse in
general: both are terrible for the uninitated because they are
unobvious to get out of (major advantage of nano there).

I hadn't realised how fat nano is (not the only consideration of
course, but zile is very good on this measure and surprisingly
functionfull).

Instaled sizes:
zile: 365K
busybox: 786K
vim-tiny: 1547K
nvi: 1605K
busybox-static: 2045K
nano: 2469K

I don't suppose we want to change away from the 'you always get at
least vi' concept, but I only ever use vi if there is nothing else
available and I can't install something else, so I like the fact that
we always have nano. I'd like it even more if we always had zile.

Just a thought (I'm _really_ not trying to start a vi/emacs argument,
but perhaps it is inevitable). If you've never heard of it, I suggest
you give it a try. v. handy.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/

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