Is vim included out-of-the-box or shall i port?

Rod Whitby rod at whitby.id.au
Fri Feb 2 13:46:13 CET 2007


[Removed the openmoko-devel at lists.openmoko.org cross-post]

Richi Plana wrote:
> Oh, i agree that a text editor would be useful on the device given that
> most options probably won't have a GUI to control them through (at least
> at the start), but I'm sure the phone already has a text editor
> component and likely a text editor application. Why use VIM? The only
> advantages I know that vim has is its keybindings. As far as I know, a
> keyboard (wired or bluetooth) isn't available and the virtual keyboard
> won't be much help for the keybindings.
...
> Mind you, on other platforms where OE works, I'm sure the "no keyboard",
> "slow CPU", "memory constrained" or "tiny viewscreen" restrictions don't
> apply.

OE is the buildsystem used for the NSLU2-Linux custom firmware, and vim
is a very popular package for that platform.

The NSLU2 has *no* keyboard, a 266MHz XScale CPU, only 32MB memory, and
*no* viewscreen.  So *all* those constraints apply.

The idea is that you ssh into the embedded device, and then run vim.  Or
Nano. Or Emacs (which is my preferred editor) :-)

(Yes, Emacs runs nicely on an NSLU2)

-- Rod Whitby
-- NSLU2-Linux Project Lead




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