At 03:25 +0200 1999-04-19, Marek Habersack wrote:
It was when potato went to glibc2.1. The version of bash installed wasn't compatible with the new libc and had to be replaced.
That is not correct, it is due to libreadline in slink being accidentally compiled without optimization, then it had to be kept that way to avoid breaking bash, I recompiled bash for glibc 2.1 for libreadline, and due to differences in the glibc 2.1 libc_nonshared lib, this broke bash if libreadline was upgraded first. It is my opinion that bash is too fragile to be /bin/sh due to its dependencies on libreadline and libncurses, other shells such as pdksh make a much safer /bin/sh. pdksh is an especially good choice due to its dependence only on libc, and it is posix compliant unlike ash, it is also a decent interactive shell, with completion, command-line editing, and history.
-- Joel Klecker (aka Espy) Debian GNU/Linux Developer <URL:mailto:jk@espy.org> <URL:mailto:espy@debian.org> <URL:http://web.espy.org/> <URL:http://www.debian.org/>