Re: Comments on the "Changing the default system shell" talk

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Luk Claes <luk@debian.org> writes:

> Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> On Sun, Jul 26 2009, Luk Claes wrote:
>>
>>> Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>
>>> A faster and smaller default system shell is important to a lot of our
>>> users.
>>
>>         I see this asserted a lot. I am pretty sure that the average
>>  user very likely does not care. The embedded system folks certainly do
>>  --- but I am not sure that the counter assertion that systems will
>>  break if /bin/sh is changed under them do not equal in number the
>>  people who benefit from small  default system shell.
>>
>>         I think it is OK to start with dash as the default on new
>>  installations, and to ask if people want to switch older ones. Forcing
>>  the switch would be, in my opinion, buggy behaviour.
>>
>>         Pardon me if forcing the /bin/sh to point to dash on existing
>>  machines is not the plan.
>
> On upgrades you are asked if you want to have dash as default system
> shell unless you have dash already installed, then we leave it as is.
>
> Cheers
>
> Luk

Two things:

1) I updated dash the last day and I didn't get asked and I don't
remeber ever having been asked before. Having dash installed before
shouldn't prevent the question. Please do always ask the question if
it wasn't asked before.

2) That changes when dash ships the /bin/sh link.


So the question really is: What mechanism will you use, if any, to
preserve bash as /bin/sh later when dash does ship /bin/sh?

MfG
        Goswin