Arch Linux wrapping nano

The Arch Linux maintainers have chosen to disable the wrapping functions in the nano text editor in order to fix wrapping problems when someone is using nano in the Arch Linux installation process.

This has sparked some controversy as it is pretty heavy-handed and not the right way to solve the problem. To edit a file without wrapping, nano provides the -w switch to disable those functions. So most of us who use nano quite frequently are in the habit of adding it instinctively.

When compiling nano using the –disable-wrapping switch it completely removes the wrapping including the parsing of the -w. So we habitual -w addicts get errors. To top it off for me, I use nano on other servers that are not running Arch so I have been having to remember when to -w and when to not.

I finally got around to ending this pain and trying to do things the “Arch way” I have created and submitted a package to the Arch User Repository (AUR) called “nano-wrap” that is exactly like the offical Arch version except it does not compile using the –disable-wrapping.

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=20596 is the link to the package in the repository.

Unfortunately pacman has also lost some functionality (-A) in the re-writes and even though the nano-wrap package indicates it provides and conflicts with nano - you will have to install it like this:

# pacman -Rd nano
# pacman -U nano-wrap-2.0.9-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz

(personally I sudo pacman but you get the drift)

If you don’t want to build your own packages and trust your maintainer (me) here is the built-package download: nano-wrap-2.0.9-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz