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Re: etch release policy: scripts "must" set "appropriate" #! line? (was: lintian: false executable-not-elf-or-script warning with perl magic header)



On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 10:18:42AM -0500, Bill Allombert wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 11:20:23AM +0200, Frank K?ster wrote:
> > >From the reading of the Etch RC Policy you are right - the RMs raised
> > the requirement from a should to a must.  On the other hand, they
> > introduced the nice word "appropriate".

> > Release Managers, do you think that scripts with a Perl magic header
> > like 

> > ,----
> > | eval '(exit $?0)' && eval 'exec perl -S $0 ${1+"$@"}' && eval 'exec perl -S $0 $argv:q'
> > |   if 0;
> > `----

> > are inacceptable?

> > Of course I would never write a maintainer or otherwise Debian-specific
> > script like this; but upstream has a reason for this "trying to be as
> > portable as possible", and I'd rather not patch all instances of magic
> > headers, as long as they work.

> Technically the issue is that the exec(2) system call will not execute
> such scripts because the kernel will not recognize it as such. On the 
> other hand, a shell will detect it and fork itself to execute it
> (instead of forking /bin/sh to execute it).

> So unless such script is only meant to be executed from a specific set of
> shells, it is a case where the script does not, in fact, work.

Precisely.  Without a shebang, such scripts work only by virtue of the first
line being valid in the current shell -- which is not guaranteed to be the
case.  So yeah, that's not really appropriate for a script that's expected
to be callable by a user.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/

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