Re: Public service announcement about Policy 10.4

[Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net>]

On 01-Aug-05, 11:05 (CDT), Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT> wrote: 
> And again, please let's focus on the *purpose* of policy. POSIX
> compatibility is not supposed to be a goal in itself, compatibility with
> other UN*X /bin/sh or support for a faster shell than bash may be.

The purpose of 10.4 was to establish, for the purpose of Debian, what
/bin/sh could be expected to implement. IIRC, this came up when people
started using shells other than bash as /bin/sh and maintainer scripts
(among others) started breaking. Given the choice among:

   1. /bin/sh is bash

   2. /bin/sh is bash or ash (now dash) or [list of acceptable shells]

   3. /bin/sh is any POSIX compliant shell

the people interested decided that #3 was the most useful, or perhaps it
was simply the easiest for everyone to agree on.

I personally think it ought to be left as is. Either comply, or change
the first line to "#!/bin/bash", which will always be there on Debian
system. Any script complicated enough to need local can probably survive
bash startup. Certainly for maintainer scripts that is, I think, an
acceptable solution; I don't believe shell startup time for maintainer
scripts dominates package installation time. (If you disagree, please
show the timings to prove it.)

If sufficient number disagree, then I think it ought to be rephrased as
"POSIX, plus these features: [list of required features]". Phrasing it
as "bash or dash [or ...]" will lead to never ending argument.

Regards,
Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland
    The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
    system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
    world.       -- seen on the net