Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> writes:
> 2. Document editor and recommend everyone implement it properly. Since
> we're going to allow packages to depend on editor, I think providing
> it would need to be a should, so that's going to be a lot of buggy
> (but not RC-buggy) editor packages. But it would get us to a clean
> dependency system. (I will leave it to someone else to tackle this
> for pager if someone really wants to.)
When I let the ball drop on this three years ago, there was a consensus
that this option was the way to go. Picking this up again, here is a
proposed Policy change to document the editor and default-editor virtual
packages.
Note that this would make quite a few packages buggy (but not RC-buggy)
since they don't Provide: editor although they participate in the
/usr/bin/editor alternative. This was considered reasonable since it
would be cleaning up the dependency structure and the bug is fairly minor
and can be dealt with when those maintainers have a chance.
I'm looking for seconds for this diff. It documents the status quo for
/usr/bin/pager; if we want to make a similar cleanup there, we can do that
as a separate bug.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
diff --git a/policy/ch-customized-programs.rst b/policy/ch-customized-programs.rst
index 747df56..27abebd 100644
--- a/policy/ch-customized-programs.rst
+++ b/policy/ch-customized-programs.rst
@@ -93,21 +93,30 @@ alternative should have a slave alternative for
``/usr/share/man/man1/pager.1.gz`` pointing to the corresponding manual
page.
-If it is very hard to adapt a program to make use of the EDITOR or PAGER
-variables, that program may be configured to use
-``/usr/bin/sensible-editor`` and ``/usr/bin/sensible-pager`` as the
-editor or pager program respectively. These are two scripts provided in
-the sensible-utils package that check the EDITOR and PAGER variables and
+Packages that register as an alternative for ``/usr/bin/editor`` should
+also provide the virtual package ``editor`` by including it in the
+``Provides`` control field. The package providing the current default
+editor for the Debian base system, and only that package, should also
+provide the ``default-editor`` virtual package. Packages that call
+``editor`` directly (not via ``sensible-editor`` or the EDITOR environment
+variable) should depend on ``default-editor | editor``.
+
+Programs may assume that ``/usr/bin/pager`` is available as a fallback
+without adding an explicit package dependency. There is no ``pager``
+virtual package.
+
+If it is difficult to adapt a program to use the EDITOR or PAGER
+variables, that program may instead be configured to use
+``/usr/bin/sensible-editor`` and ``/usr/bin/sensible-pager`` as the editor
+or pager program respectively. These are scripts provided by the
+``sensible-utils`` package that check the EDITOR and PAGER variables and
launch the appropriate program, and fall back to ``/usr/bin/editor`` and
-``/usr/bin/pager`` if the variable is not set.
+``/usr/bin/pager`` if the variable is not set. Packages using these
+scripts should declare an appropriate dependency on ``sensible-utils``.
A program may also use the VISUAL environment variable to determine the
user's choice of editor. If it exists, it should take precedence over
-EDITOR. This is in fact what ``/usr/bin/sensible-editor`` does.
-
-It is not required for a package to depend on ``editor`` and ``pager``,
-nor is it required for a package to provide such virtual
-packages. [#]_
+EDITOR. This is also what ``/usr/bin/sensible-editor`` does.
.. _s-web-appl:
@@ -573,10 +582,6 @@ installed in ``/usr/share/man/man6``.
portion is handled internally by the package system based on the os
and cpu.
-.. [#]
- The Debian base system already provides an editor and a pager
- program.
-
.. [#]
If it is not possible to establish both locks, the system shouldn't
wait for the second lock to be established, but remove the first
diff --git a/virtual-package-names-list.yaml b/virtual-package-names-list.yaml
index 2a9857a..6c0b59e 100644
--- a/virtual-package-names-list.yaml
+++ b/virtual-package-names-list.yaml
@@ -100,6 +100,14 @@ virtualPackages:
# System
+ - name: default-editor
+ description: default base system /usr/bin/editor
+ alternatives:
+ - /usr/bin/editor
+ - name: editor
+ description: suitable /usr/bin/editor
+ alternatives:
+ - /usr/bin/editor
- name: flexmem
description: anything that can access flexible memory via the OBEX Protocol
- name: foomatic-data
@@ -457,3 +465,7 @@ virtualPackages:
# Added default-dbus-session-bus
# 15 Feb 2019 Added logind
# Added default-logind
+#
+# Russ Allbery:
+# 01 Apr 2021 Added editor
+# Added default-editor
