Bug#539158: […] assumes printf is a builtin
* Thorsten Glaser (tg@mirbsd.de) [090729 16:46]:
> >So from that perspective, there are lots of POSIX failures. Do you think we
> >should treat [ specially, but not printf, because mksh happens to implement
> >the one as a built-in but not the other?
>
> I see that this weakens my argumentation, but I could still mention
> that [ lies in /bin/ on BSD (and possibly a lot more OSes), and that
> (almost?) all POSIX compatible shells available on Debian implement
> it, whereas having printf as builtin is a feature in GNU bash, a mere
> speed hack in dash, and not available in many other shells.
The case where we need to decide here is whether we want to overrule
the udev maintainer.
As it is, posix deprecated echo in favour of printf. I don't think it
would be right to require the udev maintainer to get rid of printf.
Also, both shells widely deployed in Debian provide printf as an
builtin, so I have to be convinced of the usecase of
yet-another-default-shell (and why is mksh better than dash as default
/bin/sh?).
As this is, I tend to the following resolution
1. The Technical Committee refuses to overrule the udev maintainer, as
requested by Bug 539158. The committee suggests that the policy
maintainers document in the policy what the current best practices on
providing printf (and similar functions used in the initrd like [ and
test) by shells.
(2. Further discussion as default option)
If one of the members of the tech ctte considers that we should either
overwrite the udev-maintainer or move printf to /bin, we should draft
another resolution text for that.
Cheers,
Andi
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