Re: [PATCH] Add project-wide .vimrc configuration

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 9, 2020, 07:16 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMP44s2xo=n4z6m7FhuPiZ66yPWvmdQuAodvh2XNpdVAfo6R8g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqlfe731vh.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 12:55 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 21 quoted lines

>
> Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> We have an .editorconfig file[0], which is a cross-editor file that can be
> >> used to specify these settings.  It is supported by many editors out of
> > ...
> > Also, we don't have to support configurations for every editor under
> > the sun, that's a slippery slope fallacy.
> >
> > We can stop at 1 editor: the most widely used editor by developers by far [1].
> >
> > Cheers.
> >
> > [1] https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages#query=vim
>
> It shows 71% (for vim-runtime), that is a lot higher than ~20% for
> emacs.
>
> Amusingly, https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages#query=nano tells
> us that nano clicks at 80%, which makes it the editor with the
> largest number with your yardstick ;-) [*2*].

Right. But I doubt there's many git developers using nano.

Anyway, that's not my yardstick, I just recall I've seen multiple surveys of the editors that developers use, and vim always comes at the top, by far. I just quickly searched for some evidence to sustain my notion.

> In any case, I think it is a worthy goal to ship a sample set of
> "vimrc" entries that people can readily accept for their use.  It
> also is a reasonable "feature request" to consider doing something
> similar to "editorconfig" to give other editors similar convenience.

Indeed. Editors are kind of a touchy subject, but I don't think anybody can deny that vim and emacs are the two most popular. My only point is that we don't have to support "every editor under the sun".

Cheers.

Show 8 quoted lines

> [Footnote]
>
> *2* In other words, I doubt these graphs are depicting "how widely
> is an editor used by developers".  It is just showing how often it
> is installed, and I know the primary workstation I use daily has vim
> and nano installed without me choosing to have them, as opposed to
> emacs I had to manually install, and I only use vim once every month
> and nano once every quarter.

Yes, but in Arch Linux at least no editor is installed by default.

-- 
Felipe Contreras