Hi Karl, I'm Cc'ing Ben who is the author of this change in hope he would be able to comment.
On Wed, Dec 02, 2020 at 04:19:10PM -0700, Karl Berry wrote: > Solaris 10 > > Well, it is true that Solaris 10 /bin/sh does not understand $(...). > > "Configure scripts will automatically locate a shell that supports > > Yes, I saw that too. Which is fine for autoconf's configure scripts (and > I'm very glad they're doing it), but what about when config.{guess,sub} > are executed from something other than autoconf-generated configure > scripts? Autoconf is not the whole world, by a long shot. > > https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/082 > > Thanks for the pointer. I remain completely unconvinced. The various > points are merely described as things like > "non-obvious ... convenient ... nicer ..." In other words, there is no > technical reason to force out `...` for $(...), just cosmetic reasons. > Sure, I wouldn't recommend `...` in a primer for shell programming, but > config.* is hardly that. > > It is perfectly possible to use `...` correctly and portably, and an > awful lot of work has gone into doing so. I don't know of any problems > with the use of `...` in config.* (or autoconf for that matter). For > something as fundamental as config.*, the switch seems a bad idea to me. > FWIW ... > > I doubt it's an inviting prospect for config.* to also try to find and > re-execute with a good shell, though that's another option. > > Thanks for considering, > Karl -- ldv