7 Jan 2020 02:32:11 Doug McIlroy :
> Sam was the first screen editor that I deemed worthwhile, and I
> still use it today.
I would like to experiment with Sam and run it on various *nix operating systems. There seems to be many ports.
Do I need to install some kind of Plan 9 emulation layer (in user space), which Sam builds and runs on? Obviously I'm referring to Russ Cox's libraries and user space tools.
Is it necessary to have a p9 environment to gain the most advantage of a tool like Sam? Or, is it possible for it still to function well as a transplant in a new environment such as *nix?
In that second case, what are the well ported versions of Sam that build and run directly on the target environment?
It is not necessary to have a plan 9 environment to take advantage of Sam, and there was once a port for Unix that worked outside of the usual Plan 9 world. Indeed, Sam got its start on Unix.
However, I dare say that the best port to use is the one from plan9port: Sam continued to evolve on plan9, if only gaining incremental improvements after the early Unix years. By using the plan9port version, you'll pick up on those changes (though I can't really enumerate them anymore).
- Dan C.