Hello, On Sun, 12 Jan 2025, at 20:45, Yury V. Zaytsev wrote: >> Why do you find it useful? What would be the purpose of it? Dash is supposed >> to be POSIX-compatible, so there isn’t a need for feature detection as with >> bash or zsh, and I don’t think the version of dash itself is a useful >> indicator of particular features being available or not.
> We use these variables in our shell detection code to disambiguate > between different shells with the same name. In this case, we want to > differentiate Dash from Busybox ASH. If ash is symlinked to dash we can > use that, but if not, we could check for DASH_VERSION variable. The > reason why we want to disambiguate the two is this “supposed” word in > your sentence about POSIX compatibility ;-) My answer: you don’t. Dash is POSIX shell, don’t disambiguate it. > Also, I thought that you are somehow in touch with upstream and can > forward Debian stuff to them - or maybe it’s even being developed under > the auspices of Debian now (as in D for Debian?). I tried to reach them > awhile ago asking for HISTCONTROL implementation via some Australian > mailing list, which was supposedly the right point of contact. > Unfortunately, all I’ve got was a resounding silence, so I don’t know > if the project is even maintained at all. So I’ve got an impression > that maybe Debian tracker is the right way to talk to upstream, which > it obviously doesn’t seem to be. The upstream is still alive and kicking. Dash has not been a Debian project for about 20 years now. The website of the upstream is <http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/dash/>, the mailing list lives at vger: <https://lore.kernel.org/dash/>. -- Cheers, Andrej
