I'm talking about 7.2rc1. The changes have actually partially been implemented in 6.x already, but were accidentally missed for Core 7.x x86. CorePure64 got additional changes too, though.
I tried vim via ondemand - works at my end using Core 7.2rc1 x86.
The kernel was not changed. Only scripts in core.gz .
The kernel usually doesn't change in major versions of Core Linux. Only if severe problems need to be addressed.
If you are using a custom initrd, I'd recommend a setup where you always load the default core.gz and load your custom initrd after that (containing only files you have changed - this will overwrite default files in RAM). This way it's easier to update by simply replacing core.gz without the need to remaster again. That's what I do and I'm happy with that.
To view the changes, see here
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,18873.msg124916.html#msg124916or here
http://git.tinycorelinux.net/index.cgi?url=Core-scripts.git(for git, you may need to have to reload the page several times in order for it to correctly load)
Your $PATH variable is correct. /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/ondemand must be at the end, so ondemand scripts will only run if nothing else was found in $PATH .
If you have other means to access the file system (extracting core.gz or ssh), you can check the version by reading /usr/share/doc/tc/release.txt .