svn commit: r367678 - head/usr.sbin/freebsd-update

[Rodney W. Grimes]

> On Sat, Nov 14, 2020 at 11:20 AM Mateusz Piotrowski <0mp at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hello Rodney,
> >
> > On 11/14/20 4:59 PM, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > >> Author: 0mp (doc,ports committer)
> > >> Date: Sat Nov 14 13:07:41 2020
> > >> New Revision: 367678
> > >> URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/367678
> > >>
> > >> Log:
> > >>    Document the PAGER environment variable
> > >>
> > >>    Sometimes users want to use freebsd-update(8) in a non-interactive way and
> > >>    what they often miss is that they have to set PAGER to cat(1) in order to
> > >>    avoid interactive prompts from less(1).
> > > Which was caused by the change of invoking more(1) as less(1) causing
> > > this regression, as when invoked as more(1) it falls off the end of
> > > empty input and causes no such interactive prompt.
> > >
> > > Setting PAGER to more(1) also fixes this.
> >
> > Mmm, I'm not sure if that would work. If I run "jot 1000 | more" in my terminal I still get an
> > interactive prompt. Could it be that you are referring to a different more(1) implementation? I'm
> > clearly missing something.
> >

Part of what your missing is freebsd-update(8) often outputs a 0
length file which less(1) well want you to respond Quit to before
going to the next file.  more(1) does not do that.

jot 1000 produces 1 x 1000 line file, that is not whats causing
the issues with freebsd-update and less(1), it is more like
1000 x 1 line files.

> 
> more(1) is more or less like `less -E`, which is a default PAGER I had
> advocated for back when it changed. It can be mostly non-interactive
> as long as your diffs are small, but it's definitely much less
> painful.

Yes, that would of been less painful, note that iirc there are a
few other places effected in similiar ways with 0 line output
files sent to less(1) that cause a need to hit a bunch of q's
to get the command completed.

Since I am an aged more(1) user I just globally fix PAGER.
It would of been far less painful had PAGER simply been
changed to less rather than all the binary invokations
beeing changed, but hind sight is amazing.

-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes at freebsd.org