On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 11:19 -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:
> Folks, there was a longish discussion on IRC starting about an hour
> ago about dash and bash.
These discussions are extremely long standing :) The move away from
bash has been aimed at long before I vanished from the project in 2004.
I'm really upset that 5 years are not enough to accomplish the move.
> I agree we want to move the default /bin/sh to /bin/dash.
> However I'm failing to understand why we want dash to be essential.
> If I'm not using dash as my /bin/sh why do I need it?
So you are complaining about a small package (installed size 224)
becoming essential while forcing the embedded ppl to work around a
monster (installed size 1236); numbers taken from my Ubuntu laptop
where both are essential, I hope only for a limited period of time.
Although preferring CLI over GUI I don't use both of them, I prefer
zsh for my daily work but my #!/bin/sh scripts are always posixly
correct.
> If the answer is that we really do want it everywhere independent of
> what /bin/sh is, that's fine. However, that's not obvious to me.
As long as /bin/sh refuses extensions to posix I agree with you, but
bashism has been a cuss word for years before 2004.
> So, a proposal for doing a switch with dash not essential.
> 1) all /bin/sh shells know about each other.
> 2) The prerm script for a /bin/sh shell finds another /bin/sh shell
> and updates the symlink if the current /bin/sh link is the one being
> removed.
> 3) The postinst for a /bin/sh shell can update the link if it
> decides that the installed shell would make a better /bin/sh
> 4) There is a package `the-shell ' that is essential and pre-depends
> on one of the /bin/sh shells.
Maybe "posixly-correct-shell" would be a better name.
Summing up you suggest making a virtual package - however it's called
- essential. While I think I grok your intentions, I doubt dpkg
will follow, please read carefully:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#s3.8
> Variations:
> 1) You could have a registration mechanism. My assumption is the
> set is small enough static is good
> 2) I assume that package operations cannot take place between
> calling the prerm script and actually removing the package. If that
> is false, you could make sure that you are changing the link to a
> configured shell
> I really don't mind if we go forward with the current proposal.
> However, I think I and a lot of other people would appreciate clarity,
> so far not expressed, about why dash needs to be essential.
See debian-policy cited above.
looking-forward-for-posixly-correct-/bin/sh-ly yours
Siggy
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