johnsonjh / openvi

OpenVi: Portable OpenBSD vi for UNIX systems

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OpenVi

OpenVi — Portable OpenBSD vi / ex

Table of Contents

• Overview
  • Why?
    • Why not?
• Building
  • Prerequisites
    • Required prerequisites
    • Optional prerequisites
    • Supported platforms
      • Unsupported platforms
  • Compilation
    • Platform Specifics
      • AIX
      • NetBSD
      • illumos
      • Solaris
      • Windows
        • Cygwin
• Availability
  • Source Code
  • Packages
• Versioning
• History
• License
• Acknowledgements
• Similar Projects
• See Also

Overview

OpenVi is an enhanced and portable implementation of the Berkeley vi / ex text editor, originally developed by Bill Joy.

OpenVi is a fork of the vi / ex editor included with OpenBSD, which is derived from version 1.79 of the nvi editor originally distributed as part of the Fourth Berkeley Software Distribution (4BSD).

The nvi editor was developed by Keith Bostic of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, Sven Verdoolaege, and other contributors. Nvi itself was derived from Steve Kirkendall's Elvis editor.

Why?

Why would you want to use OpenVi instead of AnotherVi?

• Derived from the (extensively audited) OpenBSD base system code
  • Focus on readability, simplicity, and correctness of implementation
  • Adherence to OpenBSD's standard secure coding practices
    • Uses secure functions (e.g. strlcpy, snprintf, mkstemp, pledge)
  • Reduced complexity for hopefully fewer program defects
• Clean source code, distributed under a permissive 3-clause BSD license
  • Some support code is distributed under the (more permissive) ISC license
• Mostly conforming to relevant standards (POSIX, SUS), where applicable
  • Enhancements, non-standard behaviors, and new features are conservatively and sanely implemented with care taken to balance user expectations, complexity, and historical accuracy
• Extensions such as bserase, expandtab, imctrl, visibletab, etc.
• Build requires only GNU Make and standard POSIX utilities
  • Easy integration with embedded, minimal, or iteratively bootstrapped environments and distributions (such as Linux From Scratch builds)
• No compile-time or build-time configuration options
  • Single standard build configuration with no incompatible variants
  • No configuration-specific bugs resulting from untested combinations or rarely exercised code paths
  • Concise and understandable documentation; no subtle platform variations
• Consistent user interface, script, and map behavior across all platforms
• Utilizes OpenBSD's extended Spencer-based regular expression engine (also adopted by LLVM, Tcl, etc.) on all supported systems
• Single, compact, self-contained binary
  • No external data files required at run-time
  • No external library dependencies (other than curses)
    • Suitable for static linking and emergency “rescue” usage
• All the various tweaks, fixes, improvements, and clean-ups accumulated over 25+ years as part of the OpenBSD base system

Why not?

So, why might you not want to use OpenVi, then?

Some of these points might be desirable features, depending on your point of view.

• Internationalization support is currently lacking
  • No support for Unicode / UTF-8 / wide character display
    • Multibyte characters are shown as individual bytes, rather than glyphs
    • Multibyte support is planned, but is unfortunately non-trivial, see:
      • Schwarze, I. (2016, September 25). Keep multibyte character support simple [Conference presentation]. EuroBSDCon 2016 Convention, Belgrade, Serbia. [pdf:OpenBSD]
      • Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino [KAME Project] and Yoshitaka Tokugawa [WIDE Project]. (1999, 6 June). Multilingual vi clones: past, now and the future [Conference presentation]. In Proceedings of the annual conference on USENIX, Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATEC '99). USENIX Association, Monterey, CA, USA, Page 45. [doi:10.5555/1268708.1268753], [abstract:USENIX] (legacy)
  • No support for bidirectional text
  • No support for regional localization or message translation
• Inefficient handling of extremely large (e.g. multi-GB) files
• No support for syntax highlighting, context-aware code completion, code folding, or “language server” integrations
• No interactive macro recording and debugging functionality
• No advanced scripting support (no BASIC, COBOL, JavaScript, Lua, Perl, PHP, Python, REXX, Ruby, S-Lang, Tcl, or anything else)
• Only curses-based visual-mode and line-based ex-mode interfaces available
  • No support for X11/Wayland, OpenGL/Vulkan, Neuralink, augmented / virtual reality, or any other graphical user interfaces

Building

Prerequisites

Required prerequisites

• POSIX.1-2008 environment: POSIX shell (sh) and utilities, Awk (mawk, nawk), etc.
• GNU Make (version 3.81 or later)
• C99 compiler (e.g. xlc, suncc, clang, gcc, etc.)
• Curses (ncurses, NetBSD curses V8+, PDCurses V2.8+, PDCursesMod, etc.)

Optional prerequisites

• Perl 5+
• C shell (csh, tcsh, etc.)
• nroff, groff, etc.

Supported platforms

• OpenVi is easily portable to most platforms with UNIX-like operating systems that are mostly conforming to the programming interface described by IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 and user environment described by IEEE Std 1003.2-2008, also known as POSIX.1-2008 and POSIX.2-2008, respectively.

• The following operating systems are fully supported and regularly tested using ix86/AMD64, ARM/AArch64, m68k, MIPS, POWER, and RISC-V processors:

  • IBM AIX 7.1+
  • Apple Darwin (macOS / Mac OS X) (ARM64, Intel, PowerPC)
  • FreeBSD 12.3+
  • GNU/Linux distributions (glibc, musl)
  • illumos OpenIndiana Hipster
  • NetBSD 9+
  • OpenBSD 6.9+
  • Oracle Solaris 11+
  • Microsoft Windows (Cygwin, Midipix, MSYS2, WSL)

• The following compilers are fully supported and regularly tested:

  • LLVM Clang (BSD, Darwin, illumos, Linux, Solaris, Windows) V6+
  • AMD Optimizing C/C++ (Linux) V3+
  • GNU GCC (AIX, BSD, Darwin, illumos, Linux, Solaris, Windows) V4.6+
  • IBM Advance Toolchain (Linux on POWER) V14.0+
  • IBM Open XL C/C++ (AIX) V17.1+
  • IBM XL C/C++ (AIX, Linux) V16.1+
  • Intel oneAPI DPC++/C++ (Linux) V2021+
  • Intel C Compiler Classic (Darwin, Linux) V19.1+
  • Oracle Developer Studio (Linux, Solaris) V12.6+
  • PCC Portable C Compiler (NetBSD) V1.0.0+

Newer or older operating system and compiler releases, within reason, should work. The versions listed above are those regularly tested and known working.

Unsupported platforms

• The following platforms are not currently supported, but support is planned for a future release:
  • Haiku Walter
  • SGI IRIX

User contributions to enhance platform support are welcomed.

Compilation

• Compilation can be performed by invoking GNU Make (usually gmake or make) from the top-level directory of a source release or git checkout.
• GNU Make's -j N flag may be used to parallelize the compilation, where N is a positive integer representing the number of parallel jobs requested.
• The following environment variables influence compilation and installation:
  • CC - C compiler to use
    • (e.g. CC=gcc)
  • OPTLEVEL - Optimization flags
    • (e.g. OPTLEVEL=-O2)
  • CFLAGS - Flags to pass to the C compiler
    • (e.g. CFLAGS="-Wall -pipe")
  • LIBS - Libraries (overriding defaults) to pass to the linker
    • (e.g. LIBS="-lpdcurses -lflock")
  • LDFLAGS - Flags to pass to the linker
    • (e.g. LDFLAGS="-L/lib/path -static")
  • V - Set to enable verbose compilation output
    • (e.g. V=1)
  • DEBUG - Set to compile a debugging build
    • (e.g. DEBUG=1)
  • LGC - Set to enable link-time garbage collection
    • (e.g. LGC=1)
  • LTO - Set to enable link-time optimization
    • (e.g. LTO=1)
  • EXTRA_LIBS - Extra libraries for linking
    • (e.g. EXTRA_LIBS=-lmtmalloc)
  • PREFIX - Directory prefix for use with install and uninstall targets
    • (e.g. PREFIX=/opt/OpenVi)
• The usual targets (all, strip, superstrip, clean, distclean, install, install-strip, uninstall, upx, etc.) are available; review the GNUmakefile to see all the available targets and options.

For example, to compile an aggressively size-optimized build, enabling link-time optimization and link-time garbage collection, explicitly using GCC:

env CC=gcc OPTLEVEL=-Os LGC=1 LTO=1 gmake sstrip

or, to verbosely compile a debugging build, explicitly using Clang:

env CC=clang DEBUG=1 V=1 gmake

For systems with GNU Make as make (e.g. GNU/Linux), basic compilation should succeed without any options or additional configuration needed:

make

With the appropriate privileges to manipulate files within the chosen PREFIX (using doas, sudo, su, etc.), the compiled executable may be installed — as-is or stripped — using an invocation such as:

doas gmake install-strip

or

sudo env PREFIX=/usr/local make install

Platform Specifics

The following sections document only platform specific differences, and are not intended to be a general or exhaustive reference. For installation of prerequisite software packages or other system configuration, consult the vendor's documentation.

AIX

• Before building OpenVi on AIX, install the ncurses libraries and headers. IBM provides the necessary packages, ncurses and ncurses-devel, in RPM format as part of the AIX Toolbox for Linux and Open Source Software. With the appropriate permissions (e.g. root), these packages are installable on most systems using the dnf or yum utilities, for example:

  dnf install ncurses ncurses-devel

  or

  yum install ncurses ncurses-devel

  The IBM AIX base system (and PASE for i, an integrated runtime environment for AIX applications on the IBM i operating system) provides libxcurses, an XPG4/XSI Extended Curses implementation derived from AT&T System V, which is not yet supported for use with OpenVi.

• Compilation is supported using IBM XL C/C++ V16.1+ (gxlc or xlclang), IBM Open XL C/C++ V17.1+ (ibm-clang), or GNU GCC (usually gcc, gcc-8, gcc-9, gcc-10, gcc-11):

  • Link-time optimization (LTO=1) requires Open XL C/C++ V17.1+. The IBM (AIX Toolbox) and Bull/Atos (Bull Freeware) GCC packages, and IBM XL C/C++ versions earlier than V17.1 are not LTO-enabled.
  • Link-time garbage collection (LGC=1) is not supported on IBM AIX.
  • A 64-bit build is the default on systems operating in 64-bit mode; for a 32-bit build, set the value of the MAIXBITS environment variable to 32 (e.g. export MAIXBITS=32).
  • The value of the CC environment variable must be set to the full path of the compiler (e.g. /opt/freeware/bin/gcc, /opt/IBM/xlC/16.1.0/bin/gxlc, /opt/IBM/openxlC/17.1.0/bin/ibm-clang, etc.) unless the compiler directory is already part of the current PATH.

• File locking (via flock() as provided by the AIX libbsd library) is non-functional; this will be investigated and corrected in a future release.

• OpenVi man pages are authored with mandoc and require conversion before use with the AIX man software (which is derived from AT&T UNIX System V.)

NetBSD

• On NetBSD installations, the default OpenVi builds use the BSD curses library provided by the NetBSD base system. To use ncurses instead, set the values of the CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and CURSESLIB environment variables appropriately (i.e. CFLAGS=-I/usr/pkg/include LDFLAGS=-L/usr/pkg/lib CURSESLIB=-lncurses).

• The LLVM LLD linker is required for link-time optimization (LTO=1) using Clang. It is available as an installable package (i.e. pkgin install lld).

illumos

• Before building OpenVi on an illumos distribution (i.e. OpenIndiana), install the ncurses libraries and headers. The OpenIndiana distribution provides the necessary ncurses package in IPS format. With the appropriate permissions (e.g. root), the package can be installed using the OpenIndiana pkg utility, for example:

  pkg install ncurses

  The OpenIndiana base system provides libcurses, an XPG4/XSI Extended Curses implementation derived from AT&T System V, which is not yet supported for use with OpenVi.

• Link-time garbage collection (LGC=1) is not supported on OpenIndiana.

Solaris

• Before building OpenVi on Oracle Solaris 11, install the ncurses libraries and headers. Oracle provides provides the necessary ncurses package for Solaris 11 in IPS format. With the appropriate permissions (e.g. root), the package can be installed using the Solaris pkg utility, for example:

  pkg install ncurses

  The base Oracle Solaris system provides libcurses, an XPG4/XSI Extended Curses implementation derived from AT&T System V, which is not yet supported for use with OpenVi.

• Compilation is supported using Oracle Developer Studio, GCC, and Clang:

  • When using Oracle Developer Studio, invoke the compiler as suncc or set the value of the _OSLCC environment variable to 1.
  • Link-time optimization (LTO=1) is currently supported only when using GCC or Clang.
  • Link-time garbage collection (LGC=1) is not supported on Solaris.
  • When using the Oracle Developer Studio (suncc) compiler, a 64-bit build is the default on systems operating in 64-bit mode; for a 32-bit build, set the value of the SUNBITS environment variable to 32 (e.g. export SUNBITS=32).

• File locking is unavailable due to the absence of flock() on Solaris. This will be addressed by supporting System V-style fcntl() locking in a future release.

Windows

• Microsoft Windows supports various development and runtime environments, including MSVC, Cygwin, Midipix, MSYS2, UWIN, the Git Bash environment, and others. Care must be taken to avoid mixing incompatible libraries and tools.

Cygwin

• Compilation problems in the Cygwin environment are often caused by incomplete or interrupted package installations, or by the installation of packages using non-standard tools (e.g. apt-cyg), which can result in missing files and dangling or missing symbolic links.
• Before compiling OpenVi under Cygwin, it is highly recommended to:
  • Update the Cygwin setup.exe application to the latest available version.
  • Update all installed packages using the new Cygwin setup.exe application.
  • Install the required prerequisite packages (i.e. make, gcc, ncurses, ncurses-devel) using the Cygwin setup.exe application.
  • Invoke the cygcheck utility (i.e. cygcheck -cv | grep -v "OK$") to verify the integrity of all currently installed packages.

Availability

Source Code

• GitHub source repository
• Latest source release

Packages

OpenVi is available to Linux and macOS users via the Homebrew package manager.

brew install openvi

Other (unofficial) distribution packages may be available.

Versioning

The OpenVi version number is based on the version of the corresponding OpenBSD release, followed by the OpenVi release number. The version command can be used to display this information in the format shown below.

Version 7.0.1 (OpenVi) 10/25/2021.

This message indicates the editor in use is OpenVi, release 1, derived from OpenBSD version 7.0, and is fully synchronized with the OpenBSD versions of vi, ex, db, and regex as of 10/25/2021 (October 25th 2021).

Changes not derived from OpenBSD commits do not advance this date. New OpenBSD releases do not reset the OpenVi release number.

History

• OpenVi

  • ChangeLog
  • Release history
  • Commit history

• OpenBSD vi

  • OpenBSD vi / ex
    • Commit history
  • OpenBSD db
    • Commit history
  • OpenBSD regex
    • Commit history

License

• OpenVi is distributed under the terms of a 3-clause BSD license.
• See the LICENSE.md file for the full license and distribution terms.

Acknowledgements

• rqsd of Libera.Chat for the idea that inspired the project and testing.
• S. V. Nickolas, Jason Stevens, and the Virtually Fun Discord community, for support and feedback.
• From the original vi acknowledgements (by Bill Joy & Mark Horton):
  • Bruce Englar encouraged the early development of this display editor.
  • Peter Kessler helped bring sanity to version 2's command layout.
  • Bill Joy wrote version 1, versions 2.0 through 2.7, and created the framework that users see in the present editor.
  • Mark Horton added macros and other features, and made the editor work on a large number of terminals and UNIX systems.
  • The financial support of UUNET Communications Services is gratefully acknowledged.

Similar Projects

• Martin Guy's Xvi, an enhanced fork of Tim Thompson's STEVIE
• S. V. Nickolas' Sivle, a cleaned-up fork of Steve Kirkendall's Elvis
• Andy Valencia's Vim57, a simplified fork of version 5.7 of Bram Moolenaar's Vim

See Also

• Carsten Kunze's vi is a currently maintained fork of the original (1BSD/2BSD) branch of the vi / ex editor, derived from Gunnar Ritter's enhanced version of the traditional vi editor.
• Nvi2 is a currently maintained feature branch of the new (4BSD) version of the nvi / nex editor, with a focus on extensibility and new features.
• Nvi1 (version 1.8+) is the currently maintained traditional branch of the new (4BSD) version of the nvi / nex editor, now developed by Sven Verdoolaege.

openvi's Issues

Debian / Ubuntu build guide

I will post this here in case it is of use to someone.
Feel free to move or purge it as you think appropriate ~

cd $HOME/Downloads

curl -LO https://github.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi/releases/latest
va=$( grep "Release OpenVi [0-9]" latest | sed '1!d' | awk '{ if ($3 ~ "[0-9]") { print $3 } else { next }}' )
# https://github.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi/releases/tag/7.3.22
vb=$( awk -F';' '/\/releases\/tag/ { print }' latest | sed 's/.*http/http/; s/\&quot.*//' |  grep -v -i assets | grep ^http | sort -u )

echo $va
echo $vb

# https://github.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi/archive/refs/tags/7.3.22.tar.gz
curl -LO https://github.com/johnsonjh/OpenVi/archive/refs/tags/"$va".tar.gz

tar -zxvf "$va".tar.gz
cd OpenVi-"$va"
ls -l

sudo apt -y install libncurses-dev gcc make
sudo env PREFIX=/usr/local make install

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/vi vi /usr/local/bin/ovi 0
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/editor editor /usr/local/bin/ovi 0
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/view view /usr/local/bin/oview 0
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/ex ex /usr/local/bin/oex 0

sudo update-alternatives --set vi /usr/local/bin/ovi
sudo update-alternatives --set editor /usr/local/bin/ovi
sudo update-alternatives --set view /usr/local/bin/oview
sudo update-alternatives --set ex /usr/local/bin/oex

#sudo apt -y remove nvi nvi-doc vim* nano*

:pre not working on macOS, missing /var/tmp/vi.recover

:preserve does not seem to work with macOS/homebrew v7.4.26 using the default /var/tmp/vi.recover location.

Low priority.

Works normally on GNU/Linux (compiled).

Simple missing directory:

$ ovi -r
Error: recdir: /var/tmp/vi.recover: No such file or directory

~
:pre
Preservation of this file not possible

:set recdir?
recdir="/var/tmp/vi.recover"

$ ls -la /var/tmp/vi*
ls: /var/tmp/vi*: No such file or directory

/var/tmp does exist so maybe add mkdir -p /var/tmp/vi.recover to the build process somehow?
Appears to work like I'd expect once I do that manually.

mkdir -p /home/kajukenbo/vi.recover and set recdir="/home/kajukenbo/vi.recover" also seems to work.

Thanks as always for keeping vi alive.

CMD via -c Flag is not executed if the file doesn't already exist

I'm not sure if this is a bug to bug compatibility issue with the original vi or something that is supposed to work exactly the way it does, but I recognized the following behavior:

If I have a file on the system, e.g. ~/hello.sh and I open it in ovi like,

ovi -c 'set wraplen=80' ~/hello.sh

and check all things set in ovi via :set. I can see that the above command was correctly executed and wraplen=80 is set.
However, if ~/hello.sh does not yet exist in the filesystem and I execute the same command wraplen does not get set.

This is also true for mappings.

For context: I'm using a shell wrapper script over ovi to set certain mappings and options depending on the file type. Right now, I'm working around the above limitation by creating the empty file with touch before and deleting it afterwards if there was no write.

Filenames with spaces are incorrectly displayed in completion

To reproduce :e ~/^I or :e *^I.

Affects OpenVi, OpenBSD vi.

nvi 1.8x dumps core.

Example of directory with file named "file with spaces":

Nvi 1.81-current:

OpenBSD vi (top), OpenVi (bottom):

Nvi2 is unaffected.

PRs from Alpine packaging activity

I've been working on a Alpine package for this editor. I just submitted a few PRs around some aspects of the install target in the GNUmakefile to make that go a bit smoother. They are all independent, but I'm happy to mix and match them based on your preference.

Thanks for making this version of vi available: I've been enjoying it!

filter read lines bypass `expandtab`

See lichray/nvi2#108 ... f1da676 adds this behavior here, currently compatible with nvi2.

alt notation mode crashes on OS X ARM64

Reported via email

Expandtab/shell command related issue

Whenever a shell command is executed via the ex command '!', and only when the option expandtab is set, vi reports Error: unable to retrieve line 0.

The next screenshot shows the ouput of the !ls command before and after setting the expandtab option.

Move to using xinstall to install compiled binaries

Will allow to remove need for CHOWN=true, as used in the Homebrew formula, etc.

BDB0511 page sizes must be a power-of-2

BDB0511 page sizes must be a power-of-2

(When using BDB 1.85 emulation)

NixOS packaging

Submitted to nixpkgs in NixOS/nixpkgs#230014

Anyone who is unsure if an issue is related, please post or link it here.

Add illumos OpenIndiana support

Difference with OpenBSD vi on handling filename completion

Hi!,
I'm using OpenVi on Mac. It's great!
One big difference between OpenVi and OpenBSD's vi is when I use filec= to expand filenames.
On OpenVi I have to keep typing in an '*' and then push tab if I want to expand what I have so far.
On OpenBSD vi it seems like the '*' is assumed. All I have to do i keep hitting tab as i type more specific
filenames, and it keeps matching.

Can you think of a way that I can not have to enter the '*' char to match all like in OpenBSD vi ?

Add Solaris support

Add Nvi2's new alternate ex notation

See lichray/nvi2@2f45b17

Unable to build on Linux without libbsd

Trying to build openvi 7.0.11 with GCC 4.6.4 on Linux with just make:

$$ make
        ld:                                         bin/vi
cl/regcomp.o: In function `enlarge':
regcomp.c:(.text+0x21c): undefined reference to `reallocarray'
cl/regcomp.o: In function `p_bracket':
regcomp.c:(.text+0xd05): undefined reference to `reallocarray'
regcomp.c:(.text+0xd2e): undefined reference to `reallocarray'
cl/regcomp.o: In function `openbsd_regcomp':
regcomp.c:(.text+0x2532): undefined reference to `reallocarray'
regcomp.c:(.text+0x268f): undefined reference to `reallocarray'
cl/regexec.o:regexec.c:(.text+0x28ae): more undefined references to `reallocarray' follow
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
GNUmakefile:356: recipe for target 'bin/vi' failed
make: *** [bin/vi] Error 1

Once I add -lbsd to LDFLAGS, it compiles fine.

NetBSD support

make strip fails on AIX

To strip, need to specify -X32, -X64, or -X32_64 or the command-line or set OBJECT_MODE=32_64 or similar in the environment.

Avoid using `#include_next` GNU extension ...

• #include_next is non-POSIX (a GNU extension) and is currently used in:
  • include/bsd_stdlib.h
  • include/bsd_string.h
  • include/sys/types.h
  • include/sys/time.h
  • include/sys/stat.h
  • include/bsd_termios.h
  • include/bsd_fcntl.h
  • include/bsd_unistd.h
  • include/libgen.h
  • include/poll.h

Numbering leads to screen corruption after displaying completions

Example: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/61629094/153507022-928bebe5-b53b-432f-9561-2be43c91e306.MOV

Screen does not seem to "automatically redraw" after edits on macOS 13/14 (Homebrew-built binary)

Since macOS Ventura 13.x, OpenVI in a terminal session does not seem to "automatically redraw" after edits.

I would presume this is actually due to however (they) changed n/curses or whatever on macOS.

Obviously there is no :set redraw or the like to test - not that I'd expect that to do much on an "intelligent terminal."
Behavior is the same in the default Terminal and iTerm2; full-screen and windowed mode.

Any suggestions on what to check or how to troubleshoot?

OpenVI installed via Homebrew, FWIW.