On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 16:28 -0700, Bruce Sass wrote: > Hmmm, I guess I'm confused by Thomas's statement... > > "I refused to stop using test -a in my packages as well, and refused to > declare #!/bin/bash." > > ...and the fact that dash, bash, and test, all document their binary -a > operator as having the same behaviour. > > Is their some Bourne style command interpreter other than dash in Debian > which offers to provide "sh"?
My open bug against policy on this point, still languishing, is #267142. At that point, I suggested and still suggest that we change Policy to restrict /bin/sh to a specific set of shells, rather than just any "Posix-compatible shell". But Policy currently requires correct operation for any Posix-compatible shell, not just those shipped in Debian. You might, I'm guessing, agree with me that simply giving a list would solve the problem, as indeed, it would. That's my preferred solution. Such a list need not be cast into stone. If we want to add an additional shell, then we can make the decision, which will inevitably require such questions as "what scripts might this break? how can we help maintainers whose scripts might break?" That's a good thing; what we have now requires maintainers to intuit somewhat mystically which things are common shell variations and manage to negotiate them all. The bug which first alerted me to this issue was #264176. The reporter of the bug does not say which shell (if any) failed to support the relevant feature. That is, perhaps, part of the reason this is all so silly, and could be easily solved by listing the shells we care about. Perhaps all of them actually support the feature! Thomas
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