Re: zsh-newuser-install

[Yuri D'Elia <wavexx@thregr.org>]

On 04/23/2014 05:50 PM, Peter Stephenson wrote:
> There's certainly plenty that could be added here --- enough that
> nothing's likely  to happen unless we get some solid feedback...
> 
> - Make it more modular so stuff can be plugged into it and more of the
> low-level framework is available as separate functions.
> 
> - Make it interact better with scripts installed by distributions?  I'm
> not sure how useful this actually is, given distributions tend to hook
> into to global /etc files, but then that doesn't give the user much
> control, which is the point of newuser.  Maybe the previous point already
> covers this well enough.

I'd like to plug myself right in here, to mention that I find the
newuser module to be frustrating once you _already_ know zsh.

It'd like it to be just a function being called in /etc/zsh/zshrc with a
simple test:

[ ! -f "~/.zshrc" ] && zmodload ... && zsh-newuser-install

So that:

- you can re-run it manually whenever you want (just zmodload&call)
- you can disable the check by editing the systemwide zshrc

... and since configuration files in /etc/ are preserved, the change
would _persist_ when zsh is updated.

Right now I'm using a post-install hook to remove the newuser module
after zsh is updated, because there are a few cases when I don't want a
zshrc around, and I really (really) know what I'm doing.

> These are all merely ideas, they are not things I would intend to do
> just because I felt like it.

I think many people nowdays wouldn't need the newuser mechanism, to be
honest. With oh-my-zsh (and friends), people just look for a
pre-configured solution which has a gazillion of options turned on.

I personally always did the opposite, by starting reading the manual
from an empty rc.

Either way, I think that the newuser mechanism is not actually "selling"
zsh to both experienced or novel users. The only thing that I see, is
that it signals to the user that "look! this is *NOT* bash", and I think
it's actually good to have for places where zsh is unexpected (note: I
*never* saw zsh being the default shell anywhere).

But that's just my 2c.