[systemd-devel] [PATCH] systemctl: add edit verb

[Simon McVittie]

On 13/10/14 14:38, Dale R. Worley wrote:
> My general understanding is that the traditional behavior when "you
> need an editor but the user hasn't specified one" is to use "vi", and
> so people who don't want "vi" *always* set $VISUAL in their
> environment.

The Right Thing™ is distro-specific. Debian and its derivatives have
sensible-editor(1) which is a shell script that uses $VISUAL, $EDITOR,
nano[1] or vi; I would expect systemd in Debian to use sensible-editor
as its fallback, either via a configure option or a patch.

In distros without sensible-editor, I'm tempted to say the solution is
"stop being a distro without sensible-editor". New systemd API? :-)

    S

[1] chosen for being small, self-documenting (hotkeys shown at the
bottom of the screen), and unlike vi, not having a learning curve like a
brick wall. I use vim myself, but I wouldn't want to inflict it on
beginners.