Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Kevin wrote:

> For what it's worth, Fedora 26 has the same issue as 27.

The issue was fixed for Fedora 26 (and Fedora 28 and EL6 and EPEL 7).
The Fedora 26 package was moved to stable 2 hours ago, so should soon
be available as an update:
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-ca3ff1ee8d

If you'd like to help expedite nmh 1.7.1's passage through the
testing process for the benefit of users on Fedora 26, please
click under the green +1 button and then the "Add Comment &
Feedback" button on:
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-4bfdedd0a9

David

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Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Kevin Cosgrove]

On 11 March 2018 at 14:19, David Levine  wrote:

> Jon wrote:
> 
> > Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> > My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
> > between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.
> 
> Here's why:
> 
> 1) nmh depended on /bin/vi
> 2) vim-minimal recently changed what it provides from /bin/vi to /usr/bin/vi
> 
> The even-more-recent fix was to change the nmh dependency from /bin/vi
> to /usr/bin/vi.
> 
> That nmh package is currently in testing if you want to get it
> from there.  If you'd like to help expedite nmh's (1.7.1) passage
> through the testing process for the benefit of users on Fedora 27,
> please click under the green +1 button and then the "Add Comment &
> Feedback" button on:
> https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-05bd7b4801

For what it's worth, Fedora 26 has the same issue as 27.

Cheerio...



--
Kevin



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Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Here's the Fedora bug report:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1551126

The initial report included this:

Additional info:
I guess that shows how few people still use nmh ;^)

David

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Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Paul F wrote:

> I don't think anyone participating was suggesting that there be a
> hard dependency on vi.

The decision on Fedora was made prior to that discussion.  (And, it
was made on Fedora, not by nmh.)

> (I think under
> debian/ubuntu, the vi dependency would be a "suggested" installation,
> not a requirement.)

I don't know of a good way to do that in a Fedora RPM spec.  I don't
consider mentioning it in the rpm description to be "good".

David

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Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Jon wrote:

> Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
> between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.

Here's why:

1) nmh depended on /bin/vi
2) vim-minimal recently changed what it provides from /bin/vi to /usr/bin/vi

The even-more-recent fix was to change the nmh dependency from /bin/vi
to /usr/bin/vi.

That nmh package is currently in testing if you want to get it
from there.  If you'd like to help expedite nmh's (1.7.1) passage
through the testing process for the benefit of users on Fedora 27,
please click under the green +1 button and then the "Add Comment &
Feedback" button on:
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-05bd7b4801

> I don't know if anybody has given any thought as to what should be a
> dependency and what shouldn't.

The decision to add Fedora nmh dependency on vi was made over 12
years ago.  I didn't make it, but I agree with it (and I set
Editor in my profile, and EDITOR, and VISUAL to something other
than vi).  It minimizes the configuration required by a user in
order to use nmh.  If a user wants a different configuration, they
can easily change it.

> Seems to me that dependencies should
> be things necessary to build, install, and run (libraries) a program.

Note that build (BuildRequires) and run-time (Requires) dependencies
are separate for this purpose.

> Of course, I could be completely off base here if vi is actually used
> as part of the build process.  But that would seem weird to me too.

Right, vi is a run-time dependency, not a build dependency.

Ken wrote:

# we have to fall back to SOMETHING, and I think vi is a reasonable default.

Especially because vi is POSIX.

David

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Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Jon Steinhart]

Ken Hornstein writes:
> >Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> >My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
> >between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.
> 
> Is this a "conflict" (as in, you can't have both of the packages
> installed at the same time) or a "requirement" (you need to have vi
> installed to use nmh)?  You say "conflict", but later on you imply
> it's a dependency issue.
> 
> FWIW, the spec file we use as a template in nmh only has a BuildRequires
> of flex and ncurses-devel, and no requirements for vi.  We don't
> necessarily have control over the dependencies used by various
> distributions in their nmh packages.
> 
> As for the the editor ... we had a discussion about that a while ago,
> and the consensus was ${VISUAL} -> ${EDITOR} -> vi.
> 
>   http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2013-01/msg00099.html
> 
> Does that mean that it should be a dependency of the packaging system?
> I'm unclear on that.  I'm not really interested in requiring people to
> have EDITOR/VISUAL set, so we have to fall back to SOMETHING, and I think
> vi is a reasonable default.
> 
> --Ken

Below is a recent update attempt.  It seems that part of the issue is requiring
a particular version of vi which doesn't seem necessary.

And I'm not disagreeing with the need to fall back to SOMETHING, I just think
that it makes more sense to have an error if that SOMETHING can't be found than
to have it be dependency.  After all, that SOMETHING could go away after nmh
was installed, so it would seem like that case would need to be handled anyway.

sudo dnf -y update
[sudo] password for jon: 
Last metadata expiration check: 0:59:34 ago on Fri 09 Mar 2018 07:00:04 AM PST.
Dependencies resolved.

 Problem: package nmh-1.6-14.fc27.x86_64 requires /bin/vi, but none of the 
providers can be installed
  - cannot install both vim-minimal-2:8.0.1553-1.fc27.x86_64 and 
vim-minimal-2:8.0.1527-1.fc27.x86_64
  - cannot install both vim-minimal-2:8.0.1176-1.fc27.x86_64 and 
vim-minimal-2:8.0.1553-1.fc27.x86_64
  - cannot install the best update candidate for package 
vim-minimal-2:8.0.1527-1.fc27.x86_64
  - cannot install the best update candidate for package nmh-1.6-14.fc27.x86_64

 Package Arch   Version 
  Repository   Size

Skipping packages with conflicts:
(add '--best --allowerasing' to command line to force their upgrade):
 vim-minimal x86_64 2:8.0.1176-1.fc27   
  fedora  532 k
 vim-minimal x86_64 2:8.0.1553-1.fc27   
  updates 540 k

Transaction Summary

Skip  2 Packages


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Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Jon,

> Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> My Fedora Core 27 installation

What is Fedora Core 27?  :-)  Fedora 26 is the latest version, so 27
might be Fedora Devel, but then you said it's crusty as if the 27 is a
typo for something older, but they stopped calling it Core with Core 6,
which is very crusty;  2006.

> I think that a run-time error message of the form "No editor defined.
> Set EDITOR or VISUAL in your environment , or Editor in your
> .mh_profile" is a better way to go.

It would be nice to see what you're seeing.

Using $VISUAL, $EDITOR, then `vi', as Ken said, is fine, but should not
create a packaging `requires' on a `vi', or even a `suggests' IMO.  As
Paul said, the error message when running vi fails just needs to be
clear.  I imagine Emacs users out there would not like to have to
install vi just for this;  imagine if it was the other way around.  :-)

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Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

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Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

ken wrote:
 > >Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
 > >My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
 > >between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.
 > 
 > Is this a "conflict" (as in, you can't have both of the packages
 > installed at the same time) or a "requirement" (you need to have vi
 > installed to use nmh)?  You say "conflict", but later on you imply
 > it's a dependency issue.
 > 
 > FWIW, the spec file we use as a template in nmh only has a BuildRequires
 > of flex and ncurses-devel, and no requirements for vi.  We don't
 > necessarily have control over the dependencies used by various
 > distributions in their nmh packages.
 > 
 > As for the the editor ... we had a discussion about that a while ago,
 > and the consensus was ${VISUAL} -> ${EDITOR} -> vi.
 > 
 >   http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2013-01/msg00099.html
 > 
 > Does that mean that it should be a dependency of the packaging system?
 > I'm unclear on that.  I'm not really interested in requiring people to
 > have EDITOR/VISUAL set, so we have to fall back to SOMETHING, and I think
 > vi is a reasonable default.

I remember that thread.  I don't think anyone participating was
suggesting that there be a hard dependency on vi.  As long as it's
clear from the docs (or the error message) that you can choose the
editor of your choice by setting an environment variable, then the
default of vi is just a nicety.  So Jon's reported behavior should
be considered a bug in his distribution.  (I think under
debian/ubuntu, the vi dependency would be a "suggested" installation,
not a requirement.)

paul
=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 42.6 degrees)


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Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

>Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
>My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
>between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.

Is this a "conflict" (as in, you can't have both of the packages
installed at the same time) or a "requirement" (you need to have vi
installed to use nmh)?  You say "conflict", but later on you imply
it's a dependency issue.

FWIW, the spec file we use as a template in nmh only has a BuildRequires
of flex and ncurses-devel, and no requirements for vi.  We don't
necessarily have control over the dependencies used by various
distributions in their nmh packages.

As for the the editor ... we had a discussion about that a while ago,
and the consensus was ${VISUAL} -> ${EDITOR} -> vi.

  http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2013-01/msg00099.html

Does that mean that it should be a dependency of the packaging system?
I'm unclear on that.  I'm not really interested in requiring people to
have EDITOR/VISUAL set, so we have to fall back to SOMETHING, and I think
vi is a reasonable default.

--Ken

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[nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Jon Steinhart]

Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.

I don't know if anybody has given any thought as to what should be a
dependency and what shouldn't.  Seems to me that dependencies should
be things necessary to build, install, and run (libraries) a program.
Not other companion programs on the system.  I think that a run-time
error message of the form "No editor defined.  Set EDITOR or VISUAL
in your environment , or Editor in your .mh_profile" is a better way
to go.

Of course, I could be completely off base here if vi is actually used
as part of the build process.  But that would seem weird to me too.

Jon

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