Defined DIFFPROG not valid for sudo

[JohnML]

If i use pacdiff in console to handle *.pacnew files i get this horrible vi even if i defined installed meld:

[john1@manjaro ~]$ sudo echo $DIFFPROG
[sudo] Passwort für john1: 
meld

No, i never touch this one:

vi or vim ?

Forgot this systeminfo:

Manjaro-Loghelper

[Teo]

pacdiff is not to be used with sudo - there is the -s option for this. So what happens if you try

pacdiff -s

and

DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff -s

[cscs]

@Teo

pacdiff is not to be used with sudo - there is the -s option for this.

pacdiff -s

Yes.

But still I wonder…

How/Where did you define DIFFPROG, @JohnML ?

[Teo]

Continuing that thought, the right place would be ~/.profile and then you source the profile in ~/.bash_profile for example. In any case some profile file in your home.

[JohnML]

the only i can remember is ~/.bashrc

export DIFFPROG=meld

[Teo]

That is ok too.

[JohnML]

But that is no issue. if i do in terminal:

[john1@manjaro ~]$ su
Passwort: 
[manjaro john1]# echo $DIFFPROG
meld

And that is ok because meld is used.
A newbe will not even know how to even close vi … two times :q very intuitiv

[BG405]

@JohnML

[john1@manjaro ~]$ su
Passwort: 

What happens without su ? … I just added it to my ~/.bashrc; am going to test it if I have any new pacnew files.

[Wollie]

I would add

DIFFPROG=/usr/bin/meld

to /etc/environment

and delete

export DIFFPROG=meld

from ~/.bashrc.

Afterwards, reboot!

[cscs]

@JohnML

the only i can remember is ~/.bashrc

export DIFFPROG=meld

Then thats probably why.

~/.bashrc is only affecting your users bash prompt.

(and assuming you use bash at all)

@Wollie

I would add

DIFFPROG=/usr/bin/meld

to /etc/environment

Thats where I would put it too. No reason for this not to be global.

PS

Maybe you want to add some others there too. Like SUDO_EDITOR=/usr/bin/micro so you can use
sudoedit or sudo -e when you want to admin a file like a reasonable person.

PPS

I thought there was an environment variable intro somewhere. Had to dig deep.

[HowTo] Set Environment Variables

Ever seen mention of sudoedit? Ever wanted to use pacdiff with something other than vim -d ? We can use Environment Variables First lets understand how they work, the ways we can configure them, and what the differences are. The ArchWiki goes into detail here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Environment_variables#Defining_variables Variables can be defined for each command we run. In the sudoedit example that means we can manually tell it to use our choice of editor by doing something …

[jrichard326]

deleted

[JohnML]

pacdiff will not ask you for password, if i remember it orrect.

But test it your own:

sudo cp /etc/locale.gen /etc/locale.gen.pacnew

then uncomment one line it , remove the # at beginning of valid line

nano  /etc/locale.gen.pacnew

save you changes with CTRL+o

Now you can play around with various options of pacdiff

[Mirdarthos]

@JohnML

pacdiff will not ask you for password, if i remember it orrect.

pacdiff doesn’t ask for a password, by default, no. Because it tuns as the user executing it and tries to perform the relevant operations as that user. However, it does have an option use sudo/sudoedit:

$ man pacdiff
[...]
-s, --sudo
Use sudo and sudoedit to merge/remove files.
[...]

…for what it’s worth.

[JohnML]

Thanks, that works and i don’t get shocked with vim or vi