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

[Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org>]

John Paul Adrian Glaubitz writes:
> And I assume, once we have fixed vim everywhere, it will be broken again
> at some point due to the fact vim upstream is continuously adding features
> which is why it's no longer suitable being an editor to be shipped in a
> minimal installation.

And Debian ships vim-tiny, not vim, as part of the minimal
installation. That the same source package also builds other versions
doesn't really matter for vim-tiny.

The only problem you mentioned was vim-tiny (arch: any) depending on
vim-common (arch: all) and these sometimes getting out of sync on Debian
Ports.  I don't think that is a good reason to switch editors and there
are other ways to work around that problem.

But if we really wanted a minimal editor: `ed` is still there with an
Installed-Size: 116 kB and no external dependencies besides libc6. It
also works without fancy terminal features.

Or have debootstrap not install any editor. But if I remember correctly
that idea wasn't popular.

Ansgar