OpenBSD Journal

less less and more less

Contributed by tj on from the end-less-puns dept.

Nicholas Marriott (nicm@) has replaced the aging version of less(1) in the OpenBSD base system with a more modern fork from illumos founder Garrett D'Amore. 

CVSROOT:	/cvs
Module name:	src
Changes by:	nicm@cvs.openbsd.org	2015/11/05 15:08:44

Modified files:
	usr.bin/less   : brac.c ch.c charset.c charset.h cmd.h cmdbuf.c 
	                 command.c cvt.c decode.c defines.h edit.c 
	                 filename.c forwback.c funcs.h ifile.c input.c 
	                 jump.c less.h lesskey.1 lesskey.c lesskey.h 
	                 line.c linenum.c lsystem.c main.c mark.c 
	                 optfunc.c option.c option.h opttbl.c os.c 
	                 output.c pattern.c pattern.h position.c 
	                 position.h prompt.c screen.c search.c signal.c 
	                 tags.c ttyin.c version.c 
	usr.bin/less/less: Makefile 
	usr.bin/less/lesskey: Makefile 
Removed files:
	usr.bin/less   : INSTALL Makefile.aut Makefile.dsb Makefile.dsg 
	                 Makefile.dsu Makefile.in Makefile.inc 
	                 Makefile.o2e Makefile.o9c Makefile.o9u 
	                 Makefile.wnb Makefile.wnm NEWS README configure 
	                 configure.ac defines.ds defines.h.in defines.o2 
	                 defines.o9 defines.wn help.c install.sh 
	                 lessecho.c lessecho.man lessecho.nro lglob.h 
	                 mkfuncs.awk mkinstalldirs pckeys.h regexp.c 
	                 regexp.h scrsize.c 

Log message:
Replace less with the cleaned-up fork of less 458 maintained by Garrett
D'Amore at https://github.com/gdamore/less-fork. This has significantly
less portability goop, has a tidied up code style, uses terminfo instead
of termcap, and has stricter POSIX compliance.

Many of our local changes have been accepted upstream: substantial
remaining local changes are code to read help files from /usr/share
rather than compiling them in, man page and help improvements, and some
tweaks to the default options.

Review and testing by millert, ok deraadt

Users of the venerable text viewing program probably won't notice any immediate differences. Having a version that's actively maintained in base, however, can only be a good thing. Some fixes from the OpenBSD crew have already been upstreamed as well.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Anonymous Coward (192.82.241.25) on

    "The current released version is less-481. It was released for general use on 16 Oct 2015." (OpenBSD uses less 458). So why is the fork better maintained then the Version from http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/ ?

    I don't understand this argument. :-(

    Is the new less more efficent/faster?!
    Currently I fail to see an advantage.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (209.226.137.108) on

      > "The current released version is less-481. It was released for general use on 16 Oct 2015." (OpenBSD uses less 458). So why is the fork better maintained then the Version from http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/ ?
      >
      > I don't understand this argument. :-(
      >
      > Is the new less more efficent/faster?!
      > Currently I fail to see an advantage.
      >

      I imagine the version of less used by OpenBSD is not 458, but 458 plus whatever new developments that have been added thereto; presumably development did not cease was the software was forked. The forked version also seems to be more POSIX compliant, so there is that.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (66.18.218.182) on

      > Currently I fail to see an advantage.

      Take a peek at this conversation for the triggering discussion:

        openbsd-tech

      And also take a moment to read the CVS log message in body of this article. Nicm@ was pretty clear on the advantages.

    3. By Anonymous Coward (24.4.221.26) on

      > "The current released version is less-481. It was released for general use on 16 Oct 2015." (OpenBSD uses less 458). So why is the fork better maintained then the Version from http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/ ?
      >
      > I don't understand this argument. :-(
      >
      > Is the new less more efficent/faster?!
      > Currently I fail to see an advantage.
      >

      Because this comes from the same place as all our code.
      NetBSD. Garrett D'amore is just to say here than "from netbsd dev".

      Comments

      1. By rjc (rjc) on

        > Because this comes from the same place as all our code.
        > NetBSD. Garrett D'amore is just to say here than "from netbsd dev".

        That's true Garrett had been working on NetBSD... 8 years ago.

        You have also clearly missed the fact that he forked _less_ for the project he has founded - Illumos.

      2. By Miod Vallat (miod) on

        I'm glad to learn that all of my code who can nowadays be found in NetBSD actually originates from there.

        Please do yourself a favor and choke on your own feces.

        Comments

        1. By Anonymous Coward (195.92.253.2) on

          > I'm glad to learn that all of my code who can nowadays be found in NetBSD actually originates from there.
          >
          > Please do yourself a favor and choke on your own feces.
          >
          You really do steel from Netbsd. Your 68k port sure did not come from Theo.

          Comments

          1. By Janne Johansson (jj) on http://www.inet6.se

            > > I'm glad to learn that all of my code who can nowadays be found in NetBSD actually originates from there.
            > > Please do yourself a favor and choke on your own feces.
            > You really do steel from Netbsd. Your 68k port sure did not come from Theo.

            If only there was a family of operating systems which had a license that allowed and encouraged cross polination...

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