Re: POSIX shell; bash ash pdksh & /bin/sh
> I just mean that the essentialness of the *current* bash.deb package is
> due *mainly* to the fact that it is the package that provides the /bin/sh
> symlink.
No!
The problem is that might have been the case long time ago. The
essentialness now comes from the fact that we *have* promissed bash would be
part of *any* debian system. So sysadmins that have developped scripts now
they will run on *any* system. Developpers that have developped scripts now
they will run on *any* system.
> Only as a mental experiment: we could make bash non-essential right now if
> we wanted, just make /bin/sh to be a real file instead of a symlink, and
> just create another binary package from the bash source containing *just*
> /bin/bash. We then could call "posix-shell" the one containing /bin/sh and
> make it essential, and the other containing /bin/bash would be the
> bash.deb package and would be just required (of course, Depends lines
> would have to be added every time /bin/bash is used directly, etc. etc.).
And suddenly everybody's customizes scripts break because bash is no longer
guaranteed to be there although we had promised it would. This will cause
missery to users.
> No, I'm not proposing to do that, not even for the distribution after the
> slink, the alternatives mechanism is a much better approach and we should
> probably not waste 426984 bytes in that way by making a real file from a
> symlink, so please consider it just a mental experiment.
I am all for getting all scripts that don't use bashishms to call "#!/bin/sh"
and so let individuals choose what shell will be called but not to remove
bash from the system.
Luis.
--
Luis Francisco Gonzalez <luisgh@cogs.susx.ac.uk>
PGP Fingerprint = F8 B1 13 DE 22 22 94 A1 14 BE 95 8E 49 39 78 76
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