Re: Zile and minimal systems

[Mathieu Othacehe]

Hey,

> ‘zile-on-guile’ is tempting but currently unmaintained.  ‘mg’ could work too.

mg seems to work fine. I'm currently testing the attached patch. Any
objections?

Thanks,

Mathieu

>From 0cff5b30711a8987bc0457c23a73982888ec802e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Mathieu Othacehe <othacehe@gnu.org>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2021 10:20:39 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] system: Provide mg instead of zile.

Since the update to the 2.6.2 release, the closure size of zile has
increased. Switch to mg which is lighter.

* gnu/system.scm (%base-packages-interactive): Replace zile by mg.
* doc/guix.texi (Proceeding with the Installation,
Using the Configuration System): Adapt those sections.
---
 doc/guix.texi  | 4 ++--
 gnu/system.scm | 3 ++-
 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/guix.texi b/doc/guix.texi
index 18bc600440..46cec73d11 100644
--- a/doc/guix.texi
+++ b/doc/guix.texi
@@ -2543,7 +2543,7 @@ provide the declaration of the operating system to be 
installed.  To
 that end, the installation system comes with three text editors.  We
 recommend GNU nano (@pxref{Top,,, nano, GNU nano Manual}), which
 supports syntax highlighting and parentheses matching; other editors
-include GNU Zile (an Emacs clone), and
+include mg (an Emacs clone), and
 nvi (a clone of the original BSD @command{vi} editor).
 We strongly recommend storing that file on the target root file system, say,
 as @file{/mnt/etc/config.scm}.  Failing to do that, you will have lost your
@@ -13485,7 +13485,7 @@ environment variable---in addition to the per-user 
profiles
 (@pxref{Invoking guix package}).  The @code{%base-packages} variable
 provides all the tools one would expect for basic user and administrator
 tasks---including the GNU Core Utilities, the GNU Networking Utilities,
-the GNU Zile lightweight text editor, @command{find}, @command{grep},
+the @command{mg} lightweight text editor, @command{find}, @command{grep},
 etc.  The example above adds GNU@tie{}Screen to those,
 taken from the @code{(gnu packages screen)}
 module (@pxref{Package Modules}).  The
diff --git a/gnu/system.scm b/gnu/system.scm
index 8a3ae27d04..3951a6806f 100644
--- a/gnu/system.scm
+++ b/gnu/system.scm
@@ -63,6 +63,7 @@
   #:use-module (gnu packages package-management)
   #:use-module (gnu packages pciutils)
   #:use-module (gnu packages texinfo)
+  #:use-module (gnu packages text-editors)
   #:use-module (gnu packages wget)
   #:use-module (gnu packages zile)
   #:use-module (gnu services)
@@ -775,7 +776,7 @@ of PROVENANCE-SERVICE-TYPE to its services."
 
 (define %base-packages-interactive
   ;; Default set of common interactive packages.
-  (list less zile nano
+  (list less mg nano
         nvi
         man-db
         info-reader                     ;the standalone Info reader (no Perl)
-- 
2.32.0