Yrurtj

System: Linux Mint 18.1 64-bit Cinnamon.

Bash: Packaged version 4.3.46(1)-release.

Objective: To define Bash aliases to launch various CLI and GUI text editors while opening a file in root mode from gnome-terminal emulator.

Progress: For example, the following aliases work as expected:

For CLI:

alias sunano='sudo nano'

For GUI:

alias suxed='sudo xed'

They both open any file as root.

Problem: I have an issue with gksudo in conjunction with sublime-text:

alias susubl='gksudo /opt/sublime_text/sublime_text'

Sometimes it works. It just does not do anything most of the time.

How do I debug such a thing with inconsistent behavior. It does not output anything. No error message or similar.

You shouldn’t run an editor as root unless absolutely necessary, you should set sudoedit up appropriately. Then you can do

SUDO_EDITOR="/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text -w" sudoedit yourfile

sudoedit will check you’re allowed to do this, make a copy of the file that you can edit with changing ids, start your editor, and then, when the editor exits, copy the file back if it has been changed.

I’d suggest a function rather than an alias:

function susubl {

    export SUDO_EDITOR="/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text -w"

    sudoedit "$@"

}

although as Jeff Schaller pointed out, you can use env to put this in an alias and avoid changing your shell’s environment:

alias susubl='env SUDO_EDITOR="/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text -w" sudoedit'

The -w option ensures that the Sublime Text invocation waits until the files are closed before returning and letting sudoedit copy the files back.

Expanding on Stephen Kitt's answer, just filling a gap really

1. 
   

   Find out, on what path your editor is located, e.g.:

   
   
   

   $ which nano
   
   /usr/local/bin/nano
   
   

   
   
   

   As you can see, I use compiled nano, not the packaged version; no matter this can change from system/config to other system/config.

   
   


2. 
   

   The CLI text editors like vi or nano do not seem to have the wait option, so for my nano I can write a function like this:

   
   
   

   sunano()
   
   {
   
       export SUDO_EDITOR='/usr/local/bin/nano'
   
       sudoedit "$@"
   
   }
   
   

   
   


3. 
   

   On the contrary, the GUI text editors like Linux Mint's integrated xed, free programs like Visual Studio Code (code), or paid programs like Sublime Text (subl) all seem to have the wait option, and you have to use it in order to avoid the problem described in my question, you can use something similar to these functions:

   
   
   

   suxed()
   
   {
   
       export SUDO_EDITOR='/usr/bin/xed -w'
   
       sudoedit "$@"
   
   }
   
   
   
   sucode()
   
   {
   
       export SUDO_EDITOR='/usr/bin/code -w'
   
       sudoedit "$@"
   
   }
   
   
   
   susubl()
   
   {
   
       export SUDO_EDITOR='/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text -w'
   
       sudoedit "$@"
   
   }
   
   

   
   

What the --wait option effectively does is, that the editor will wait on the terminal until you close it, thus waiting on close of the editor, enabling further actions to be planned and done on editor close, in this instance to save the sudoedit changes. Normally, it would just free the terminal, and you would get a new prompt.

Imagine another useful usage for this:

code /home/vlastimil/.bash_aliases -w && source /home/vlastimil/.bash_aliases

Hopefully, with this example, I make myself clearer.

This can be further generalized to:

# text editors as root; the proper way through sudoedit

sudoedit_internal()

{

    editor_path=${1}

    editor_wait_option=${2}

    shift 2

    export SUDO_EDITOR="${editor_path} ${editor_wait_option}"

    sudoedit "${@}"

}



# proprietary, yet probably most popular - Sublime Text

susubl() { sudoedit_internal '/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text' '-w' "${@}"; }



# my personal editor of choice - Visual Studio Code

sucode() { sudoedit_internal '/usr/bin/code' '-w' "${@}"; }



# Linux Mint built-in editor - Xed

suxed() { sudoedit_internal '/usr/bin/xed' '-w' "${@}"; }



# my personal CLI editor of choice - Nano

sunano() { sudoedit_internal '/usr/local/bin/nano' '' "${@}"; }