Re: Several reasons why debian should not use bash for /bin/sh
-- On Jul 30, 6:00pm, Rob Browning wrote:
> Subject: Re: Several reasons why debian should not use bash for /bin/sh
> Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com> writes:
>
> > As long as we treat this as a means of quickly leading us to
> > potential instaces of non-conformance. this is good. But that should
> > not be what we use to determin acceptable constructs.
>
> Right, that's what I meant. I certainly didn't mean that it would be
> in any way "conclusive".
> Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930
-- End of excerpt from Rob Browning --
The man page of pdksh indicates that pdksh is (or can be with
a command line flag or environment variable or compile time flag)
compatible with the POSIX shell. It further lists the differences
between the POSIX shell mode and the normal ksh mode.
This leads me to believe that using pdksh gets us the best of
all worlds: it is posix compliant, it is small and fast, and it
will show where scripts are using features specific to bash. If
we find instances where it is not POSIX compliant, it would be
appropriate to file bug reports, just as I am sure bug reports
are filed if there are instances of non-compliances found in
bash.
I'm not suggesting that bash be gotten rid of -- it is far too
useful an interactive shell for people who don't like getting
confused between delete and backspace or who wonder why the
arrow keys don't work. I am suggesting that bash, which uses
twice as much memory as pdksh, which is considerably slower than,
and which depends on many more libraries than pdksh, is not as good
a choice for /bin/sh as pdksh. Perhaps ash is a better choice
still, but it may lack some posix features necessary to achieve
the strictest level of posix compliance.
chris
--
Chris Ulrich cdulrich@ucdavis.edu 530 754 4355
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