[Aptitude-devel] Bug#808575: maybe use $PAGER when showing choices in command line mode

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Hi,

2015-12-20 17:54 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson:
>Package: aptitude
>Version: 0.7.5-3
>Severity: wishlist
>
>Got a problem here in command line mode.
>
>      Upgrade the following packages:
>7)      libapt-pkg-perl [0.1.29+b4 (now) -> 0.1.29+b5 (unstable)]
>8)      libcairo-perl [1.106-1 (now) -> 1.106-1+b1 (unstable)]
>9)      libcommon-sense-perl [3.74-1 (now) -> 3.74-1+b1 (unstable)]
>...
>38)     libyaml-syck-perl [1.29-1 (now) -> 1.29-1+b1 (unstable)]
>39)     perl-tk [1:804.033-1 (now) -> 1:804.033-1+b1 (unstable)]
>
>
>
>Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] **ALSO NOTE THE BIG 3 line gap above***
>
>Well what about the first few? They have flown off my screen. So maybe
>aptitude should honor PAGER?
>
>The man page says
>
>       PAGER
>           If this environment variable is set, aptitude will use it to
>           display changelogs when "aptitude changelog" is invoked. If not
>           set, it defaults to more.
>
>so maybe it should kick in optionally also in this case.
>
>One notes one can still use less(1) $LESS with
>
>       -F or --quit-if-one-screen
>              Causes less to automatically exit if the entire file can be dis-
>              played on the first screen.
>

I think that a better solution for cases like this would be to use
--visual-preview.

The formatting of information in that case is a bit better than with
command line, and one can scroll up and down and fold subtrees, etc.

Honouring $PAGER would be nice in general, but I think that aptitude
already spawns too many processes to perform various tasks, and spawning
processes as root is always dangerous (and circumventing that to use
lower priviledges means quite a lot of work).


Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>