Re: /bin/sh

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

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 12:21:33PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 10:03:34AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> > I think that, to convince people that flexibility won't cause stability
> > and complexity problems, you're going to need to present a complete and
> > fairly bulletproof implementation plan.  Given how difficult the bash to
> > dash transition was, I think it's going to have a fairly high bar to meet.
> 
> dash still has two outstanding multiply-release-ignored grave bugs as a
> result of the last transition.  A minimum demonstration of competence on the
> part of anyone proposing to change the shell again is to fix those RC bugs
> without introducing new ones.

The system-shell idea fixes axactly those two bugs:

# dash fails to upgrade if /bin/sh is locally diverted
# dash upgrade breaks mksh-as-/bin/sh

You could say the whole reason for the idea were those 2 bugs.
 
> > That being said, I think removing the use of diversions for handling the
> > default shell and simplifying the current situation would remove
> > complexity, and therefore should be strongly considered.  Once that's
> > done, if you really want to change the root shell on your own system, it
> > should again be possible to use a simple local diversion to do so.
> 
> Yes.

MfG
	Goswin

PS: I never advocated changing the default /bin/sh.