[vim/vim] :help iccf does not work :-( (Issue #12186)

Ashlin Darius Govindasamy

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Mar 21, 2023, 2:39:49 PM3/21/23

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Steps to reproduce

Run

:help iccf

Expected behaviour

Well maybe show the iccf information? Or open a web page?

But returns this error

Version of Vim

8.2.4919

Environment

adgsenpai@adgpc:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS
Release: 22.04
Codename: jammy

Logs and stack traces

No response

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K.Takata

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Mar 22, 2023, 1:32:54 AM3/22/23

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Maybe, you have only installed vim-tiny package and not installed vim-runtime package?
Installing vim package should also install vim-runtime package as the dependency.

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Ashlin Darius Govindasamy

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Mar 22, 2023, 2:51:44 AM3/22/23

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Maybe, you have only installed vim-tiny package and not installed vim-runtime package?
Installing vim package should also install vim-runtime package as the dependency.

I never install anything it came in the base installation of Ubuntu.

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K.Takata

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Mar 22, 2023, 3:29:54 AM3/22/23

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Then, the help files are not installed.

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Christian Brabandt

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Mar 22, 2023, 4:01:14 AM3/22/23

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does no help file work? What happens if you just use :help?

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Ashlin Darius Govindasamy

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Mar 22, 2023, 5:13:53 AM3/22/23

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does no help file work? What happens if you just use :help?

It works

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K.Takata

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Mar 22, 2023, 6:35:21 AM3/22/23

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Could you show the screenshot of :help?

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Christian Brabandt

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Mar 22, 2023, 6:42:38 AM3/22/23

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Looks like some distribution/package problem?

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K.Takata

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Mar 22, 2023, 6:43:36 AM3/22/23

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Looks like some distribution/package problem?

I think so.

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K.Takata

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Mar 22, 2023, 6:46:40 AM3/22/23

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When I uninstalled vim-runtime on Ubuntu, :help shows the following help:

*help.txt*      For Vim version 7.4.  Last change: 2016 Sep 07

                  VIM - fake help file for vim-tiny

The Vim online help is not installed on this Debian GNU/Linux system.

WHY ?

Because only the "vim-tiny" package is installed, whose sole purpose is to
provide the vi command for base installations.  As such, it contains a minimal
version of Vim compiled with no graphical user interface and a small subset of
features, in order to keep the package size small.

Since the "vim-runtime" package is rather huge when compared to "vim-tiny",
installing the latter does not automatically install the former.

HOW TO GET A BETTER VIM

To get a more featureful Vim binary (and a vim command, rather than just vi),
install one of the following packages: vim, vim-nox, vim-athena, vim-gtk, or

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Christian Brabandt

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Mar 22, 2023, 7:07:08 AM3/22/23

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oh I have never noticed that

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Ashlin Darius Govindasamy

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Mar 22, 2023, 7:16:57 AM3/22/23

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Could you show the screenshot of :help?

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K.Takata

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Mar 22, 2023, 7:23:39 AM3/22/23

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Okay, it is the same with the above case.
So, please install vim, vim-nox, vim-gtk or other Vim package as the help says.

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Ashlin Darius Govindasamy

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Mar 22, 2023, 7:43:07 AM3/22/23

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Okay, it is the same with the above case. So, please install vim, vim-nox, vim-gtk or other Vim package as the help says.

Okay makes sense from the pure vim command it works in vi does not work.

Strange how Canonical does not ship the pure vim with their distro.

Thanks again, it works on the vim command which i installed.

Maybe in the vi remove that :help for :help iccf in vi or add that uganda.txt for the vi

Its quite interesting

Vim means 'vi improved'. Vim commands and their syntax are fully compatible with vi.

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Christian Brabandt

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Mar 22, 2023, 8:16:59 AM3/22/23

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Maybe in the vi remove that :help for :help iccf in vi or add that uganda.txt for the vi

That's something for Ubuntus or Debians Bugtracker.

Vim means 'vi improved'. Vim commands and their syntax are fully compatible with vi.

Yes in the sense, that the vim follows the syntax give by vi (e.g. " denotes a quote character) etc

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Bram Moolenaar

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Mar 22, 2023, 12:52:00 PM3/22/23

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Hmm, this means the Vim license is not included. That's not good, it might actually be breaking some rules.
What would be the best place to bring this up?

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James McCoy

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Mar 22, 2023, 8:21:02 PM3/22/23

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Maybe in the vi remove that :help for :help iccf in vi or add that uganda.txt for the vi

Whether the information in the intro screen is accurate or not depends on which packages are installed, so I'd rather not patch out that information. I could look into shipping some additional files in vim-common to ensure the intro screen text is always relevant, but that's also not static text if I recall correctly.

Hmm, this means the Vim license is not included.

The license is included, just not accessible via the :help. Every package ships with /usr/share/doc/<package>/copyright, documenting the license(s) for the package.

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Christian Brabandt

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Mar 23, 2023, 3:40:46 AM3/23/23

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Hm, is there a reason, the tiny vim cannot ship just the runtime/docs folder? I suppose that shouldn't be too much space-wise?

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K.Takata

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Mar 23, 2023, 4:26:07 AM3/23/23

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It seems that it is described in the above fake help file:

Since the "vim-runtime" package is rather huge when compared to "vim-tiny",
installing the latter does not automatically install the former.

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Bram Moolenaar

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Mar 23, 2023, 11:20:32 AM3/23/23

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> It seems that it is described in the above fake help file:
>
> > Since the "vim-runtime" package is rather huge when compared to "vim-tiny",
> > installing the latter does not automatically install the former.

"vim-runtime" includes lots of plugin files. I guess installing just
the help, without having duplicate files, would require another package,
possibly called "vim-help". The help files would then be removed from
"vim-runtime" and "vim-runtime" would depend on "vim-help".

--
Not too long ago, cut and paste was done with scissors and glue...

/// Bram Moolenaar -- ***@***.*** -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\
/// \\\
\\\ sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ ///
\\\ help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org ///

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Christian Brabandt

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Mar 23, 2023, 6:19:43 PM3/23/23

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I downloaded the vim-runtime Debian bullseye package . It is compressed of size 6MB. uncompressed 35MB.
/usr/share/vim/vim82/doc alone has 8.6MB.
I then removed everything except for /usr/share/doc and /usr/share/vim/vim82/doc, and packaged it back as tar.xz package (which seems to be used by the Debian package internally). The new archive was then 2MB.

That does not seem too bad, also I am still surprised it is that much documentation.

In comparison, the vim-tiny package is 700K, the vim-tiny binary has 1.4MB. Okay that is still significant less than just the hypothetical vim-help package, so maybe not such a good idea after all.

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Marvin Renich

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Mar 24, 2023, 6:36:55 AM3/24/23

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* Christian Brabandt <vim-dev...@256bit.org> [230323 18:19]:

> I downloaded the `vim-runtime` Debian bullseye [package

> ](https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/all/vim-runtime/download). It

> is compressed of size 6MB. uncompressed 35MB.
> `/usr/share/vim/vim82/doc` alone has 8.6MB. I then removed everything

> except for `/usr/share/doc` and `/usr/share/vim/vim82/doc`, and

> packaged it back as tar.xz package (which seems to be used by the
> Debian package internally). The new archive was then 2MB.
>
> That does not seem too bad, also I am still surprised it is that much
> documentation.
>
> In comparison, the vim-tiny package is 700K, the `vim-tiny` binary has
> 1.4MB. Okay that is still significant less than just the hypothetical
> vim-help package, so maybe not such a good idea after all.

I was about to suggest that vim-tiny include its own copy of uganda.txt,
which vim-runtime would then divert like it does for help.txt, but I
think the best solution is just to move uganda.txt into vim-common. It
increases the installed size of vim-tiny and dependencies by only 13k,
makes uganda.txt available to all versions of vim, and is trivial to do
(alright, maybe there is some packaging trickiness when moving an
existing file from one package to another, but it is doable).

...Marvin

Bram Moolenaar

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Mar 25, 2023, 5:29:04 PM3/25/23

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I haven't tried it, but I think this also requires a version of
runtime/doc/tags that only has the valid tags. Otherwise some
unexpected errors would appear.

--
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it.

/// Bram Moolenaar -- Br...@Moolenaar.net -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\

James McCoy

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Jul 4, 2023, 10:58:23 AM7/4/23

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FYI, I've recently uploaded changes to address this to Debian. The relevant help files (sponsor.txt, uganda.txt, and version9.txt) were moved to the vim-common package, which all vim variants (including vim-tiny) use.