On 01-Aug-05, 11:05 (CDT), Marco d'Itri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> And again, please let's focus on the *purpose* of policy. POSIX
> compatibility is not supposed to be a goal in itself, compatibility with
> other UN*X /bin/sh or support for a faster shell than bash may be.
The purpose of 10.4 was to establish, for the purpose of Debian, what
/bin/sh could be expected to implement. IIRC, this came up when people
started using shells other than bash as /bin/sh and maintainer scripts
(among others) started breaking. Given the choice among:
1. /bin/sh is bash
2. /bin/sh is bash or ash (now dash) or [list of acceptable shells]
3. /bin/sh is any POSIX compliant shell
the people interested decided that #3 was the most useful, or perhaps it
was simply the easiest for everyone to agree on.
I personally think it ought to be left as is. Either comply, or change
the first line to "#!/bin/bash", which will always be there on Debian
system. Any script complicated enough to need local can probably survive
bash startup. Certainly for maintainer scripts that is, I think, an
acceptable solution; I don't believe shell startup time for maintainer
scripts dominates package installation time. (If you disagree, please
show the timings to prove it.)
If sufficient number disagree, then I think it ought to be rephrased as
"POSIX, plus these features: [list of required features]". Phrasing it
as "bash or dash [or ...]" will lead to never ending argument.
Regards,
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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