Re: Replace /rescue/vi with mined(1) from DragonFlyBSD

On Fri, 2005-Jun-17 15:13:53 -0700, Steve Kargl wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 06:06:53PM -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
>> This topic comes up about every 3 months.  ncurses can be compiled to have
>> embedded terminal descriptions.  That's one choice.  Another is to have a
>> small termcap file.  That's another choice.  Of course another choice is
>> to change the editor (though stating that it has support for cons25 and
>> xterm sounds suspicious, since they do differ).

It's possible to write a full-screen editor using a fairly minimal set
of ANSI sequences (CUP and EL would do, but adding more sequences will
help) that is common to cons25 and xterm (and VT100 etc).  This may
not be as "efficient" as an application that is tuned to use all the
features available in the terminal but that is totally irrelevant for
an application running on the console.

>I've already stated that I'm aware of the PR that has
>a minimalist termcap, which needs to be installed somewhere
>that /rescue/vi can find it.
>
>-r-xr-xr-x  129 root  wheel  3669272 Jun 17 15:09 /rescue/ee*
>-r-xr-xr-x    1 root  wheel  3564216 Jun 17 14:50 /rescue/mined*
>-r-xr-xr-x    2 root  wheel  3940176 Jun 16 15:56 /rescue/vi*

Exactly what are you comparing here?  Are these all crunched binaries
built identically except for the embedded editor?

If you're looking for ways to save space in /rescue, there are other
low-hanging fruit before you start moving to yet another editor:
- It's difficult to justify both sh and [t]csh.
- echo (which is builtin both sh and [t]csh)
- test (which is builtin to sh)
- clri (which is builtin to fsdb)
- routed, rtquery, rtsol (recovering a hosed system shouldn't need a
  routing daemon - a static route to the backup server should do)
- pax (when the new libarchive tar is available)
- id (there's no 'su' so how can I be anything other than root?)

If someone really wants to spend time developing a stripped down
application that would be useful in /rescue, they should look at
ssh.  A cut-down ssh/libssl would be far more appreciated.

>This is an editor meant for recovering a system.  It's not
>a full blown kitchen sink.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that we include emacs in /rescue :-)

-- 
Peter Jeremy