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Seemant Kulleen <seemant@g.o> writes: |
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> On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 01:38, Matthew Kennedy wrote: |
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>> I know we have virtual/editor etc. but do we have a mechanism to |
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>> invoke the users choice in editor? |
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>> |
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>> Not all stuff I've encountered cares about $EDITOR etc., and I ask |
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>> because of a recent change in dev-lisp/clisp where i needed to set a |
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>> specific editor. |
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>> |
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>> Any volunteers to implement the Debian "alternatives" system? Or |
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>> maybe we just want a /usr/bin/generic-editor... |
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>> |
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>> Matt |
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> |
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> For the slightly clueless, of which I am one, can you explain both |
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> methods? The /usr/bin/generic-editor in particular piques my |
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> interest. |
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Really they are the same thing in the general sense. IIRC, Debian's |
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alternative system works like this (arrows are symlinks) |
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/usr/bin/editor --> /etc/alternatives/editor |
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/etc/alternatives/editor --> /usr/bin/emacs |
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Just a simple indirection, really. |
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The cool part is the Debian update-alternatives program. You run it |
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like this: |
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# update-alternatives --config editor |
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There are 3 programs which provide `editor'. |
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|
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Selection Command |
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----------------------------------------------- |
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*+ 1 /usr/bin/nano |
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2 /bin/ed |
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3 /usr/bin/nvi |
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Enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: |
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The "+" indicates the currently selected program. Selecting a new |
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choice adjusts what that symlink from /etc/alternatives/editor points |
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to. This works system-wide of course. |
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Debian really have got this well integrated into their distro. The |
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have alternatives arranged for editors, awks, ftps, infobrowsers, |
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pagers, telnet clients, java runtimes and sdks, etc. |
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I think if we really want to continue with our mantra of |
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customizability, we really need something like this respected portage |
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wide. |
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|
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Matt |
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-- |
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Matthew Kennedy |
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Gentoo Linux Developer |
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-- |
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gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
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