The use of dash also breaks the (soon-to-be GPL) Sun Java JDK Makefiles, which have
ECHO = echo -e (Yes, this is arguably a Sun bug) 6482201: ubuntu 6.10 does not recongnize echo -e http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6482201 The suggestion of reconfiguring /bin/sh to point back to bash probably works today, but this is not a reasonable suggestion for real business customers. Rule #1 of using an operating system is "NEVER change the operating system as supplied" (Putting things in /usr/local is OK. Don't ever change /bin) Changing /bin/sh to point to a different shell is a "warranty-voiding" action. Imagine the havoc if /bin/sh were set to point to /bin/csh. If the dash experiment is successful, then over time "dashisms" will appear in various scripts. In fact, what assurance do users have that Ubuntu developers don't do this *deliberately*? Users will only have the choice of having different sets of broken scripts, depending on how they configure the /bin/sh symlink. sparr seems to have a very Ubuntu-centric point of view. People write scripts and Makefiles to run on a large variety of Unix systems. Ubuntu is one of hundreds of such platforms. Because GNU echo, Solaris echo, bash echo and zsh echo all allow the "-e" option, it is quite easy for users to assume that "-e" is standard. It is unfortunate that Unix 2003 forbids echo from having any options. Only the most masochistic and perfectionistic of us ever consult the Unix 2003 documentation. -- Script that are using bash could be broken with the new symlink https://launchpad.net/bugs/61463 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
