[BusyBox] [PATCH] New comm applet

[Rob Landley]

On Saturday 02 April 2005 10:13 pm, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
> >> > And yes, less is cool.  I'd personally prefer one that didn't mess
> >> > with $TERM or curses and just belted out ANSI sequences (a >20 year
> >> > old standard everything out there understands)...
> >>
> >> This assumption is wrong. The last time I was forced to use a genuine
> >> text terminal that did not support ANSI escape sequences was about two
> >> years ago. Emacs supplies a 'dumb' terminal in shell mode. Different
> >> terminal emulators have different bugs in there control code.
> >
> > For our purposes, the assumption is correct.
>
> ... which is just a somewhat indirect way to confess that it isn't.

Are you saying you believe that the primary context of messages posted on the 
busybox mailing list is other than what should or should not be used in/added 
to busybox?

> > The busybox commands top, vi, ls, reset, clear, and the cmdedit
> > portion of the shell have all output ANSI sequences for a while now,
> > and nobody's complained except you just now.
>
> This is a misrepresentation of my statement.

Possibly a misunderstanding of what the heck you're talking about, because I 
suspect I still don't.

> > The linux _kernel_ supported Ansi escape sequences before the 1.0
> > release 10 years ago.
>
> This isn't relevant.

In that case, you believe your original post _is_ relevant?  I'm talking about 
busybox, which runs on Linux and humors other systems where convenient.  What 
are you talking about?

> > The fact that Emacs has explicitly chosen not to support them is
> > Emacs' problem.
>
> At most, this could be a problem for someone trying to run your
> software in an Emacs-buffer (or under the control of any other program
> that doesn't implement a terminal emulator).

Anybody trying to run less under the control of a program that doesn't 
implement a terminal emulator is not going to have less work properly, are 
they?  As for running vi under not just emacs but the emacs "dumb terminal" 
mode... the mind boggles.

> > Nothing in busybox currently uses curses, and adding it
> > would be bad.
>
> This may well be the case, although it would be more of a point if the
> assertion had any supporting arguments.

Okay, either you're objecting to the part before the comma, or after.  If it's 
the part before, then I have to ask whether you're incapable of using grep 
and ldd, or merely unwiling to do so.  If it's the part after, I have to ask 
how you think it might conceivably be a good thing to add a dependency on a 
253k shared library to a project that exists to be optimized for size, to the 
point where a patch to save 22 bytes spawned excited follow-up...

http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/2001-May/003549.html

The only thing in busybox that uses curses right now is "make menuconfig", 
which is just a build tool we copied verbatim from the linux kernel (the last 
patch 8 months ago synced it with 2.6.7).  This doesn't introduce any 
dependencies into the busybox binary itself.  And yes I knew this _before_ I 
grepped the source just now to be sure, because I've built "make 
allyesconfig" of busybox on a system that didn't have curses installed, and 
we haven't got autoconf.

In theory, we could optimize away the requirement from menuconfig.  In 
practice, I don't think anybody cares.

> And your statement is - of course - still wrong.

You know, combined with your previous sentence about a lack of supporting 
arguments, I'm really starting to suspect you're trolling.  (Interesting 
philosophical question: does considering that kind of juxtaposition to be 
intentional count as giving you the benefit of the doubt, or not?)

> [...]
>
> > Busybox has never tried for 100% coverage of every weird GNU
> > idiosyncrasy.
>
> 'curses' isn't a "GNU idiosyncrasy". It was developed at Berkerly,
> first released in BSD UNIX, and became a part of System III
> afterwards.

Emacs' lack of modern terminal emulation (presumably intentionally omitted in 
what you say it itself calls a "dumb terminal") is the gnu idiosyncrasy I 
referred to, and it's also a fairly irrelevant consideration when trying to 
determine the environment busybox programs like "less", "top", and "vi" 
should be expected to run properly under.

If I was interested in pandering to emacs, I'd be programming in lisp.

> > There is no NEED for terminfo anymore, it's just outputting different
> > emulations that are then intrerpreted by software.
>
> Would you please reread this sentence very carefully:
>
> 	The last time I was forced to use a genuine text terminal that
> 	did not support ANSI escape sequences was about two years ago.

Are you saying you were trying to use recent general-purpose Linux software on 
that system?  There are still systems out there that run in EBCDIC, and I 
continue not to see the relevance...

Rob