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Re: Several reason a minimal POSIX /bin/bash is a bad idea



Hi,
>>"Gregory" == Gregory S Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> writes:

 Gregory> I proposed this for our unstable development distribution,
 Gregory> not the stable public distribution. I don't see anything
 Gregory> disturbing about having our own developers use something
 Gregory> that is more likely to turn up bugs for a while. I agree
 Gregory> this isn't quite the same as the dpkg --force-overwrite
 Gregory> issue, but I think you're overestimating the number of
 Gregory> things that will break and I hope you're overestimating the
 Gregory> number of non-developers who use the unstable dist.

	I think that I am not far wrong on the latter count. And whay
 can't we just make it possible, and ask developers nicelely to test
 it? Do we not even trust our developer to do this muhc unless we turn
 fascist and force them to? 

	If indeed even the develoers are so lackadaisical that we
 shan't test for this when it is made convenient for us, without the
 system changing it without permission, then maybe we should close
 shop and shit to using Red Hat.

 Gregory> This discussion seems to be largely dominated by lots of
 Gregory> people with strong opinions but no actual experience using
 Gregory> any shell but Bash. This is unfortunate, Bash is not the be
 Gregory> all and end all of shells, it's buggy, it deviates from
 Gregory> POSIX in both subtle and blatant ways, and it's
 Gregory> *HUGE*. While it may be a good interactive shell, it's
 Gregory> really just not appropriate for running system scripts.

	Sorry, but that does not describve me. I have been using UNIX
 snce before there was a bash; I have used shells on Ultrix, HP-UX,
 AIX, and old SUn-OS, as well as several flavours of SGI. 

	I am, however, also familair with what happens when people
 blatantly and gratuitously make changes that break running systems;
 and changing the /bin/sh on Debian systems is not something to be
 gone into lightly.

	manoj
 whose favourite shell may well be zsh
-- 
 Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a
 human soul. Mark Twain
Manoj Srivastava  <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E


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