/bin/sh (was Re: jessie release goals)
Andreas Beckmann <anbe <at> debian.org> writes:
> now might be the right time to start a discussion about release goals
> for jessie. Here are some points that come into my mind right now (and
* Resolve that /bin/sh issue (see the open RC bugs against dash which
just got ignored for a stable release for the *second* time) e.g. by
transitioning to Goswin’s system-shell-foo package, and then request
(eventually require) packages to declare any dependencies on shell
interpreters other than /bin/sh explicitly (begin by changing lintian
to not warn about these as bash still and dash newly is Essential,
then change Policy(IIRC) to request these dependencies to be explicit),
so that jessie+2, if not jessie+1, can be run without dash and bash
installed, which would mean encouraging maintainers of “core” tools
to not depend on them for their maintainer scripts, init scripts, etc.
(debootstrap would probably need to be adjusted to cope but we’ve got
two releases time for that).
Shells suitable for /bin/sh are currently bash, dash, mksh.
I believe posh can be made suitable with a bit of hacking it
(e.g. adding fixes from mksh) and coreutils moving /usr/bin/printf
to /bin/printf (best way out of the Md issue, really).
I believe ksh93 can be made suitably by making 'alias local=typeset'
implicit like pdksh did.
I have no idea whether yash or zsh can be made suitable, but I think
both could, if the maintainers and possibly upstream are interested.
I personally think busybox’ shell builtins are unsuitable.
I’m willing to work, and the dash maintainer has indicated acceptance;
feedback from the bash maintainer, last time I looked, was not yet there.
My stated goal here is, indeed, to be able to run at least some useful
configurations of a Debian installation without *both* bash and dash
installed. I know Han Boetes has run Crux Linux, on the desktop, with
only mksh installed, with relatively few fixes to packages.
bye,
//mirabilos
Reply to: