Looking for historical source of the ex/vi editor

[Anton Shepelev]

Hello, all.

Have you an idea where one could find the sources of the
various versions of the ex/vi editor, besides those archived
at TUHS:

1BSD/ex-1.1
2.11BSD/src/ucb/ex
2.9BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex/ex2
2.9BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex/ex3
2BSD/src/ex
3BSD/usr/src/cmd/ex
4.1cBSD/usr/src/ucb/ex
4.2BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex
4.3BSD-Reno/src/usr.bin/ex
4.3BSD-Tahoe/usr/src/ucb
4.3BSD-UWisc/src/ucb/ex
4.3BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex
4.4BSD/usr/src/usr.bin/ex
4BSD/usr/src/cmd/ex
SunOS-4.1.4/usr.bin/ex
OpenSolaris_b135/cmd/vi

These include vv. 1.1, 2.13, 3.2, 3.6, and many variants of
3.7. Has anything else been preserved to your knowledge?

[John McCue]

Followups trimmed to: comp.unix.bsd.misc

Post by Anton Shepelev
Hello, all.
Have you an idea where one could find the sources of the
various versions of the ex/vi editor, besides those archived

I do not know what TUHS is, but there is this, maybe that
will have what you are looking for.

https://archive.softwareheritage.org/

<snip>

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

I do not know what TUHS is ...

<https://www.tuhs.org/>, presumably.

[Geoff Clare]

Post by Anton Shepelev
Have you an idea where one could find the sources of the
various versions of the ex/vi editor, besides those archived

[...]

Post by Anton Shepelev
These include vv. 1.1, 2.13, 3.2, 3.6, and many variants of
3.7. Has anything else been preserved to your knowledge?

https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net

[Anton Shepelev]

Post by Geoff Clare
https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net

That is Gunnar Ritter's /The Traditional Vi/, a slightly
modernised version Bill Joy's vi from 2.11BSD, now
abandoned. I have not found any historical versions
archived there, except Ritter's own development history in
CVS.

[Geoff Clare]

Post by Anton Shepelev

Post by Geoff Clare
https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net

That is Gunnar Ritter's /The Traditional Vi/, a slightly
modernised version Bill Joy's vi from 2.11BSD, now
abandoned. I have not found any historical versions
archived there, except Ritter's own development history in
CVS.

I thought the enhancements might be of interest. As stated on the
project home page:

It adds support for international character sets, including
multibyte encodings such as UTF-8, and some minor enhancements
that were not present in BSD vi 3.7, but had been included in
later vi versions for System V or in POSIX.2.

[Anton Shepelev]

[Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.misc]

Post by Geoff Clare

Post by Anton Shepelev

Post by Geoff Clare
https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net

That is Gunnar Ritter's /The Traditional Vi/, a slightly
modernised version Bill Joy's vi from 2.11BSD, now
bandoned. I have not found any historical versions
archived there, except Ritter's own development history
in CVS.

I thought the enhancements might be of interest.

Of course, Ritter's enhancements are good, and I will add
his entire CVS on top of the historical sources. My problem
right now, however, is the scarcity of the archived
historical versions of vi.

[Sebastian]

Post by Anton Shepelev
Hello, all.
Have you an idea where one could find the sources of the
various versions of the ex/vi editor, besides those archived
1BSD/ex-1.1
2.11BSD/src/ucb/ex
2.9BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex/ex2
2.9BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex/ex3
2BSD/src/ex
3BSD/usr/src/cmd/ex
4.1cBSD/usr/src/ucb/ex
4.2BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex
4.3BSD-Reno/src/usr.bin/ex
4.3BSD-Tahoe/usr/src/ucb
4.3BSD-UWisc/src/ucb/ex
4.3BSD/usr/src/ucb/ex
4.4BSD/usr/src/usr.bin/ex
4BSD/usr/src/cmd/ex
SunOS-4.1.4/usr.bin/ex
OpenSolaris_b135/cmd/vi
These include vv. 1.1, 2.13, 3.2, 3.6, and many variants of
3.7. Has anything else been preserved to your knowledge?

If you SSH to ***@sdf.org, you can find your way into an emulated
PDP-11 running System V. It has some version of vi installed,
with source code. It's possible to extract this code from the
system by first porting uuencode to it, and then porting a
version of tar that you can also run someplace else. The tar
that's installed on the system is not compatible with modern tars,
nor is it compatible with V7 tar.

GNU Screen has a command called "log" (default key binding:
C-a H) that dumps all terminal output to a file. This is
the best way I can think of to get output from uuencode down
to your local disk.

I found it easy to port the tar from V7 to this system, and I
was also able to port it to Linux.

I don't know what version of vi it is, but the following
appears at the end of the READ_ME, and might help identify

Post by Anton Shepelev
5/07/82
HOCC UNIX Support
Jim Seagraves (houxi!beau)
The 70 and vax code has been working for over a
week on th HOCC machines. Let me know if any problems arise.
Also, please forward any new and wonderful termcap descriptions.

The man page says "UNIX 5.0" at the top and is dated 10/10/83. The
source tree looks different from the 2.11BSD version of vi. The
man page talks a lot about features that were removed from the editor
to get it to fit on a PDP-11.

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Sebastian
PDP-11 running System V. It has some version of vi installed,
with source code. It's possible to extract this code from the
system by first porting uuencode to it, and then porting a
version of tar that you can also run someplace else. The tar
that's installed on the system is not compatible with modern tars,
nor is it compatible with V7 tar.

Something is wrong here. A PDP-11 running SysV? And with the uid "3b2"
also? And this isn't an AT&T 3B2 running SysV?
--scott

[Richard Kettlewell]

Post by Scott Dorsey

PDP-11 running System V. It has some version of vi installed, with
source code. It's possible to extract this code from the system by
first porting uuencode to it, and then porting a version of tar that
you can also run someplace else. The tar that's installed on the
system is not compatible with modern tars, nor is it compatible with
V7 tar.

Something is wrong here. A PDP-11 running SysV?

That surprised me too, but Wikipedia tells me that SVR1 ran on PDP-11
and VAX.

It doesn’t seem to work very well on this emulator however...

error1

HALT instruction, PC: 000676 (JSR PC,4(R5))
sim>
sim> go

error2

HALT instruction, PC: 000716 (JSR PC,4(R5))
sim>

Post by Scott Dorsey
And with the uid "3b2" also? And this isn't an AT&T 3B2 running SysV?

3b2 is just a username, the menu system offers a range of platforms.

[Dan Cross]

Post by Scott Dorsey

Post by Sebastian
PDP-11 running System V. It has some version of vi installed,
with source code. It's possible to extract this code from the
system by first porting uuencode to it, and then porting a
version of tar that you can also run someplace else. The tar
that's installed on the system is not compatible with modern tars,
nor is it compatible with V7 tar.

Something is wrong here. A PDP-11 running SysV? And with the uid "3b2"
also? And this isn't an AT&T 3B2 running SysV?

The earliest versions of System V (e.g., Unix 4 and SVR1) ran on
the PDP-11.

The above is correct; logging into `***@sdf.org` puts one into a
captive menu environment, and one of the options there is to
connect to an emulated PDP-11 running SysV; a new instance will
start if you select that menu option. Then you can, `boot rp0`
and `0unix` (this will display as `0=unix`).

- Dan C.