[Toybox] [PATCH] clear.c: Clear scrollback buffer on non-vte (gnome based) terminals

[Oliver Webb]

On Tuesday, March 5th, 2024 at 18:31, enh <enh at google.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 5, 2024 at 4:01 PM Oliver Webb via Toybox
> > \e[3J is a widely implemented extension (so is \ec), not standardized, but
> > linux tty's, VTE terminals (gnome-terminal and the dozen derivatives of it),
> > st, xterm, kitty, and tmux all have it. And probably more that I haven't tested yet.
> > I haven't found a terminal without support for it, which is why I decided to use it.
> 
> fwiw, i just tested and that sequence works (and has the expected
> effect) on macOS' terminal too.

Yay, thanks for testing. Was worried that MacOS might not have support for that

> > Or Linux and
> > the rest of the unix-es (HP-UX, Solaris, SunOS, Hurd and Minix to some extent)
> > that were relevant in the unix wars.
> 
> (ouch! i'm offended on their behalf that IRIX -- and even godawful
> AIX! -- don't make your list, but "hurd" does :-)

System III/V were the ones I forgot about while typing the email but remembered
existed after sending. I could've added more but I didn't want the list to become
a paragraph long

> i honestly still
> don't believe hurd actually exists! i've never seen it,

Taking a quick look at the release notes for hurd, they are starting x86_64 and AMD64
support, Not surprised you've never seen it and neither have I.

In the 80s and 90s it was probably a lot more relevant then it is now.
It got to the point where even the FSF abandoned it, everyone used
linux because the people coding linux knew how to make a OS
(at the time at least) reasonably, the GNU people didn't

A excerpt of the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate about mach (the base for hurd,
because GNU couldn't even write a good _base_ for their kernel in 8 years.
They took it from somewhere else and passed it off as their own, then ruined it
because GNU) comes to mind when mentioning hurd:

"In fact the /whole/ linux kernel is much smaller than the 386-dependent
things in mach: i386.tar.Z for the current version of mach is well over
800kB compressed (823391 bytes according to nic.funet.fi).  Admittedly,
mach is "somewhat" bigger and has more features, but that should still
tell you something." - Linus Torvalds in the Taunenbaum-Torvalds Debate 

> whereas i've
> actively used all the others you mention, plus the two i just
> mentioned, and Tru64 too. if you want "obscure but definitely a real thing", how about Plan 9?)

I haven't heard of Tru64 before, looking at the wikipedia page there isn't anything special
to it (EVERY company had something like Solaris/SunOS/HP-UX/AIX/[Million other Unix-es here]
before Linux). SCO Unix and Xenix are also ones I forgot to mention, and undoubtedly others

I've taken a pretty good look at plan9port (does what it says on the tin).
I have the binaries of it saved for quick reference. Okay-ish design, but everything
is tied into rc (their shell) and other things way to closely (I'd guess execvp() calls everywhere,
they could've just used libraries but that'd be too portable). To the point most 
commands don't run unless you put the binary directory in your $PATH and break other
commands. Since it's a "port" of a undeveloped project my guess is that it's more like a museum exhibit
then something with actual goals beyond "get it running without touching it too much".

- Oliver Webb aquahobbyist at proton.me

P.S. I've stopped CC-ing mouse on this thread because my mailer keeps giving
errors when trying to send emails to him:
<mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG>: connect to
    MX-4.rodents-montreal.org[192.139.46.68]:25: Connection refused
I'd normally send a direct email about this, but the entire problem is that _I can't_