Re: ash vs. bash

[Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>]

On Tue, Jul 20, 1999 at 12:27:09PM +0100, Jules Bean wrote:
> Michael Stone wrote:
> > If people are going to keep making this claim, someone needs to post
> > some useful numbers. I'm not interested in whether ash starts .2s faster
> > than bash; if people want to argue that using ash speeds up the system,
> > let's have some real comparisons of common system tasks. I'd like to see
> > some real justification before breaking a working system.
> 
> You can hunt through the mailing list archives for last time this
> discussion came up.  There are speed advantages. IIRC, they are
> considerable on slow machines (386/486),.

I don't recall a good test proceedure being followed then, either. I do
recall a lot of statements like "it seems faster," "I think the startup
runs quicker," etc.  That's not solid enough justification for this
claim.

> n any case, I think we should at least *support* the ability to change
> your /bin/sh, which means changing /bin/bash so it doesn't alter the
> /bin/sh symlink as long as it points to an executable file.

I fully support that (I use an ash /bin/sh myself, and find bash's
behavior a real pain in the ass.) It's the radical talk of making that
the default and stripping bash off the system that I think is
groundless, or at least premature.

Mike Stone