Re: Bashisms and Dashisms...

[Andreas Metzler <ametzler@logic.univie.ac.at>]

On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 04:18:21PM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
> A maintainer script with a #!/bin/sh line should only use posix
> syntax. If one needs more features (e.g. test -L), one can instead use
> #!/bin/bash.

test -L is POSIX afaict.

> However, this seems unnecessarily restricted to me. dash also knows
> the non-POSIX extensions to the test builtin. So if /bin/sh pointed to
> dash, my script would still run.
[...]

This issue has not yet been decided upon, but curently we do not take
it very strict, the current rule of the thumb is:

/bin/sh Script runs with | 
bash	dash	posh     | bug-severity
-------------------------+------------
yes	yes	yes      | none
yes	yes	no       | minor
yes	no	no       | serious

I guess we'll end up requiring posix + selected features for /bin/sh
(echo -n, command -v, ...)
                cu andreas