[gentoo-dev] vim

[Aron Griffis]

I'm considering a change and would like feedback on it.  Currently there
are two ebuilds for vim.  The first is sys-apps/vim-nogui, the second is
app-editors/vim-gtk.

I would like to collapse these into a single ebuild called
app-editors/vim.  This ebuild fulfills the following goals:

(1) Provide a nogui version of Vim that includes the various
    interpreters (Perl, Python, Ruby) that are listed in USE.  The
    sys-apps/vim-nogui ebuild can't do this because it's designed to be
    used on minimal system installation.  However I think that ebuild
    can retire now that e3 is available for minimal installations.

(2) Provide a gui version of Vim that is built depending on the USE
    flags (unlike the current app-editors/vim-gtk ebuild).  For example,
    use gnome, use gtk, or use X (Athena widgets in this case).  This
    version is installed as /usr/bin/gvim

(3) Provide them in the same ebuild, so that it isn't necessary to
    maintain separate ebuilds to follow the versions of Vim.

(4) Upgrade to Vim 6.  Officially this version is still in Beta, but
    it's used by many people in production already because of the added
    features.  I believe RH ships Vim 6 in their most recent version.

I think these goals cater to 95% of Vim users by providing both
graphical and non-graphical versions, with the full feature-set in each.
The only reason I haven't committed it yet is that I'm not sure how to
go about retiring sys-apps/vim-nogui and app-editors/vim-gtk.  Also,
I would like to verify with the other Gentoo developers that this would
be an acceptable course.

If I receive no negative feedback to this email in the next couple days,
I will pursue retiring the current vim ebuilds, and commit this new
app-editors/vim ebuild.

Thanks,
Aron

P.S.  Thanks to Insyte who handed me his first Vim 6 ebuild, even though
it has been changed significantly since then.