On Aug 2, 11:17am, Dale Scheetz wrote: } Subject: Re: New virtual package names. } On Fri, 2 Aug 1996, Warwick HARVEY wrote: } } > > On another note, is there an editor virtual package? Is there any interest } > > in adding one? It could be valuable to add Provides: editor to ae (and } > > others as well). } > } > What would it be used for? Are there packages that depend on having an } > editor, or for which it would be appropriate to recommend one (and have any } > old editor serve the purpose)? If so, no problem... } > } Here is a better reason: } } I'd like to be able to remove `ae', but it won't deinstall. It should } be possible to remove ANY package if I really want to. I don't like } it when I'm treated like a child by the packaging system.
It could be nice to have packages providing editor to also update an `editor' binary with update-alternative. This way, base packages (or packages like quota) which actually default to 'ae' or 'vi' when VISUAL or EDITOR are not set would default to 'editor'. Talking about that, I think the packages could even provide editor *and/or* visual, so that other programs could do something like: ed = getenv("VISUAL"); if (!ed || !*ed) ed = getenv("EDITOR"); if (!ed || !*ed) ed = "visual"; if (!found_in_path(ed)) ed = "editor"; to choose an editor to use. Yves. --