Re: [gentoo-user] Am I wrong?..

[Daniel da Veiga]

2009/10/1 Arthur D. <spinal.by@××××.ru>:
> Hello, happy Gentoo users! I'm new on this distro, so I'm sorry if you
> consider to be stupid what I gonna say.
>
> Many of us prefer editors other than nano. Some of us believe in ideas of
> freedom and choice which Gentoo provides us with. But...
>
> There're ones who prefer primitive hardcoding over giving the enduser to
> choose. There're defaults set by someone, that you should respect.
> Because... Just because he wants so. Because you are nothing. Just another
> ungrateful user...
> An example?
>
> The package SUDO. It is one of the most mandatory packages in distro.
> But it totally ignores the enduser's favor in editing.
> It just hardcodes what the ebuild's maintainer decided. Once and forever.
>
> Do you want to remove nano from your system? DON'T DO THAT! Or you gonna
> get some issues, you shouldn't get, if the things work as expected.
>
> I just installed VIM with emerge, and removed nano because I considered
> it to be absolutely unnecessary in my system. Why I need nano? I am a VIM
> fan. And here the troubles begin...
> Run "sudo visudo" and you get this:
>     ~ $ sudo visudo
> visudo: no editor found (editor path = /bin/nano)
>     ~ $ env | grep -i edit
> EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim
>
> What a surprise! Hm... Possibly I did something wrong when setting my
> system, that terminates me with this error?..
>
> So I was forced to spend my time analysing what is wrong with the package
> and how to fix that. Because I remember it was working as expected in my
> previous LFS (linuxfromscratch) system. My quests leaded me to the ebuild
> of sudo. And I saw this nice shiny line there:
> --with-editor=/bin/nano
>
> Stop. I don't use nano. I even don't have it! But the ebuild doesn't check
> if nano is installed. No care. It was just like said to me:
> "Hey, you are just a stupid moron! Who removes default editor? He-he..."
>
> I asked the ebuild maintainer to fix this behaviour. And what did he say?
> "You should read manual page of sudo in order to make it work as expected.
> To make it respect your preferences. And I don't care what editor you
> prefer. Nano is Gentoo default editor!!! You understand? Stop boring me!
> I will not change anything! Ha-ha..."
>
> Actually it was said in other words but the idea is same.
> Looks like the principle "it just works" is not for Gentoo users.
>
> If you don't agree with ignoring of your preferences,
> please vote for this bug:
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/votes.cgi?action=show_user&bug_id=286017#vote_286017
>
> P.S. Having defaults is not bad. But they should not override our
> favourites.
>

Section 8.c of the Gentoo Handbook (called System Information) advises
you to edit /etc/rc.conf to change your preferences.

Either you missed that section or didn't read the documentation, the
dev has all the right to answer like that. Creating the bug before
asking here was also not a good idea.

-- 
Daniel da Veiga