Why not remove old stuff.

Spartrekus said:
@ralphbsz
You don't want to install vim on a server, do you ?
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I am currently doing this; and it annoys me. It seems to be the default editor for editing crons via 'crontab -e -u...'. Annoyingly, vim requires pango (i.e. building Firefox/Spidermonkey), Wayland and a number of x11 packages. It's taking forever to install.
 
Lamia said:
I am currently doing this; and it annoys me. It seems to be the default editor for editing crons via 'crontab -e -u...'. Annoyingly, vim requires pango (i.e. building Firefox/Spidermonkey), Wayland and a number of x11 packages. It's taking forever to install.
Click to expand...

The default editor should be $EDITOR, with IIRC a fallback to vi, not vim.

Anyways, what's wrong with using vim? Just use the vim-console flavor if you don't want to use/install GUI stuff.
 
Spartrekus said:
ed is about 500 kilobytes.

leafpad is much larger.
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That's really funny to me. Indeed disk space for programs and the operating system is trivial these days. It simply doesn't matter. However, I can't help but note that I can put a whole operating system and everything I need to send and receive emails, on a single 360 kilobyte floppy. In such a context, I think it is appropriate to call ed "bloated". (Yes, you can quote me on that.)

Which reminds me of one of my many deprecated blogs and sites out there that I've mostly forgotten about. Here is my favorite computer - total storage is one single DS/DD 5.25" drive. I must admit however, that I haven't used it since I restored it. I now use mail/claws-mail and have close to 10k emails in my inbox. Times change, but we mustn't forget one legitimate use for old programs - sheer enjoyment. :)
 
I don't really see the odd shell or editor being an issue myself. However, I've thought for at least a few years now that Sendmail shouldn't be in base. Obviously email support is required, but it should be a simple lda, and a service that can accept local messages then submit them to either the lda or a remote smtp relay, supporting tls and auth/login by default. (Probably smtpd from OpenBSD would be the most obvious choice - or maybe the dragonfly mail agent)
 
Spartrekus said:
You don't want to install vim on a server, do you ?
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vim? No.
vi? Definitely. Matter-of-fact, it is pre-installed as part of the base OS in FreeBSD. All my Linux machines have it too. For emergencies, when other editors break, I can (very slowly and painfully) use it to fix things.
 
Principle Of Least Astonishment
As FreeBSD evolves, changes visible to the user should be kept as unsurprising as possible. For example, arbitrarily rearranging system startup variables in /etc/defaults/rc.conf violates POLA. Developers consider POLA when contemplating user-visible system changes.
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www.freebsd.org

FreeBSD Handbook

A constantly evolving, comprehensive resource for FreeBSD users
www.freebsd.org www.freebsd.org
 
I like the principle of least astonishment, that's a really great philosophy in my mind, and again why I have high praise for FreeBSD's direction. Things do have to change to stay relevant, but it's really nice to know you're not going to see radical changes from one version to the next.

So far the only thing worthy of any debate I've seen in this thread is whether the base system should include sendmail or some other transport agent.

To me talk of default shells is just nitpicking. I've not run into a situation where I could not do something because I wasn't logged into the shell I needed. Even if that's the case you can change shells quickly and easily once the system is up.

Disk space is really a moot issue. The base FreeBSD system is amazingly small in terms of relative disk space, not a consideration in the least. Even for embedded, the newest devices carry storage in the tens of gigabytes. Already a fully loaded FreeBSD system (typical) does not take much more than a couple GB, much smaller than mainstream operating systems.
 
Zirias said:
The default editor should be $EDITOR, with IIRC a fallback to vi, not vim.

Anyways, what's wrong with using vim? Just use the vim-console flavor if you don't want to use/install GUI stuff.
Click to expand...
Of course, I know about vim-lite, which builds like vim except for the gtk2 component. I guess all I mentioned above(Wayland, x11, pango etc) are not only for gtk2. I chose not to use since I read that.
Nothing is wrong with vim but for those few observations.
 
Lamia said:
I am currently doing this; and it annoys me. It seems to be the default editor for editing crons via 'crontab -e -u...'. Annoyingly, vim requires pango (i.e. building Firefox/Spidermonkey), Wayland and a number of x11 packages. It's taking forever to install.
Click to expand...

A server needs precautions and necessary files only. Not vim, or whatever stuffs that are not necessary.
Please let me explain you a possibility.

Installing vim (with vim or vim-console) and stuffs is risky, right, on an important server, such as Apache,....

You shall leave your server in peace, really. The less stuffs you will install, the most stable will be the server.
You can get the files right from compilation, even to compile a small alternative vi.
You can fairly use clang and a C code. Fetch (fetch) to get all the c files, or bring them with ssh.
You just need to compile, then, nothing will be touched on the server mostly.
 
On BSD systems, it could be also osh, instead of korn shell for fun. It could likely work / for fun and experimental only. Bit curious if it would break the box.
 
I'd personally love to see zsh as the default interactive shell in base :) IMHO, C shells are a bad idea. I disabled tcsh in src.conf and use zsh from ports everywhere. With zfs datasets all on the same pool and packages from my own poudriere repo, this is very unlikely to break, but if it would break anyways, there's still "toor" using /bin/sh, which is a PITA for interactive use, but works anyways.

Still, it's good and important to ship a shell meant for interactive use in base -- I just don't like the choice, but as you can configure base to your liking as well, I don't see a problem here.
 
Alain De Vos said:
I personally consider freebsd containing old stuff like ed , like sendmail, or like csh.
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So, should we remove cat(1), df(1) or ls(1) too? They're more than 25 years old!

[base] Index of /vendor/CSRG/dist/bin

svnweb.freebsd.org svnweb.freebsd.org

Alain De Vos said:
Why not remove them or move them to optional ports.
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Why? What's the rational? Age? If that's the only rational there would be nothing left of FreeBSD. You do know FreeBSD is a direct descendant of the original AT&T UNIX, right?

[base] Contents of /head/share/misc/bsd-family-tree

svnweb.freebsd.org svnweb.freebsd.org
 
rigoletto@ said:
Not all wines are made to age well. Indeed just a few percentage of it (5-10%) will improve after a year, and 1% or less in the next 5-10 years. ;)
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Which just illustrates the point that FreeBSD is the OS equivalent of the 1% best wines that age very well. Which reminds me that I have to break open one of the few bottles of Graham Malvedos 1982 Port I have remaining - that aged really well.
 
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