Re: Proposed new POSIX sh policy
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 11:13:37AM +0100, Gabor Gombas wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 09:36:36PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
>
> > Why? Surely it would be useful to know what the differences are between
> > various shells. The statement "Posix-compatible" was apparently
> > intended by the authors of that part of the Policy Manual to do that
> > work for us, but it doesn't. That doesn't mean the work is valueless.
>
> POSIX (SUSv3) + -a/-o + local was such a statement, and you started
> arguing because it did not contain your favorite-of-the-day feature. You
> fail to realize that any such statement _WILL_ restrict the set of
> allowed features because that is the _purpose_ of such a statement.
>
> And yes, the world moves and sometimes the limits should be extended -
> that's happening right now. But that does not mean that suddenly
> everything-and-the-kithcen-sink that some particular implementation
> supports should be allowed. And it is also _fine_ if GNU coreutils
> supports more than required by the policy; just make sure you explicitely
> write "/usr/bin/test" if you want to rely on such a feature.
Hard-coding path is frowned upon theses days and there is no standard way
to disable a shell built-in, so in practice we are actively prevented
from using coreutils test and thus coreutils test features. So the
question is not merely what should be the default.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large blue swirl here.
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