6.41. Installing Ed-0.2

6.41.1. Contents of Ed

GNU ed is an 8-bit clean, POSIX-compliant line editor.

Installed programs: ed and red (link to ed)

6.41.2.

6.41.3. Ed Installation Dependencies

Ed depends on: Bash, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, GCC, Glibc, Grep, Make, Sed.

6.41.4.

6.41.5. Installation of Ed

Ed isn't something which many people use. It's installed here because it can be used by the patch program if you encounter an ed-based patch file. This happens rarely because diff-based patches are preferred these days.

Ed normally uses the mktemp function to create temporary files in /tmp, but this function contains a vulnerability (see the section on Temporary Files in http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Secure-Programs-HOWTO/avoid-race.html). The following patch makes Ed use mkstemp instead, which is the recommended way to create temporary files.

Apply the patch:

patch -Np1 -i ../ed-0.2-mkstemp.patch

Now prepare Ed for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

This package has a test suite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

Install the package:

make install

And move the programs to the /bin directory, so they can be used in the event that the /usr partition is unavailable.

mv /usr/bin/{ed,red} /bin