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

[Lennart Poettering]

On Fri, 17.10.14 15:45, Mantas Mikulėnas (grawity at gmail.com) wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 3:11 PM, Lennart Poettering
> <lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
> > On Fri, 17.10.14 14:29, Mantas Mikulėnas (grawity at gmail.com) wrote:
> >
> >> > Technically proficient people will set $EDITOR or $VISUAL
> >> > anyway. Non-technical people won't. Non-technical people are likel to
> >> > be totally lost in vi/vim. For those folks probably nano makes a
> >> > better choice, simply because it shows an explanation of they
> >> > supported keys at the bottom of the screen.
> >> >
> >> > Hence, I think doing a logic like this would make sense:
> >> >
> >> > 1) if $EDITOR is set, use it
> >> > 2) otherwise: if $VISUAL is set, use it
> >> > 3) otherwise: if "nano" exists, use it
> >> > 4) otherwise: if "vim" exists, use it
> >> > 5) otherwise: if "vi" exists, use it
> >>
> >> The list of editors seems fine.
> >>
> >> Normally $VISUAL would be first, followed by $EDITOR...
> >>
> >> (But in practice nobody sets them to different values anyway, since no
> >> programs aside from mailx care about the distinction. So it's fine
> >> either way, and just ignoring $VISUAL would be just as good.)
> >
> > Is there a real distinction between $VISUAL and $EDITOR? environ(7)
> > makes no distinction, have any better docs that clarify the supposed
> > distinction?
> 
> It's much older than me, but as far as I know, one would have had
> $EDITOR set to 'ed' or 'ex' for "dumb" typewriter-based terminals
> (which were used before CRT terminals were a thing) and $VISUAL to
> 'vi' or 'emacs' for CRT-based terminals (which could show full-screen
> programs), and programs would start the right one depending on $TERM
> value.
> 
> But these days, I haven't seen any program (other than mailx) actually
> care about the differences; they pretty much always go $VISUAL ||
> $EDITOR || something || something || vi. So most people have both set
> to the same editor, just in case. So I'd safely get rid of $VISUAL

I'd argue that if people really are strange enough to try to use such
a dumb terminal and expect to get ed or ex, then they should just set
$VISUAL/$EDITOR to that and be done. Or in other words: if that
distinction really makes sense they should set the right editor
themselves in their .profile, based on the $TERM they find set (or not
set). Either way, I think we should honour $EDITOR because it makes
sense, and $VISUAL because it's probably more universally used and for
historical compatibility.

I think Ronny's patch was pretty close to what I think it should work like.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat