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Re: /bin/sh



On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 01:10:06PM +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> 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

It does so in a way that there is not a consensus that we should adopt.

I'm saying you need to demonstrate that you can fix these bugs in such a way
that dash *exclusively* owns /bin/sh; and once this has been demonstrated,
which can only be done conclusively by an upload to unstable that puts the
solution in contact with real-world users, we can consider adopting a more
complicated scheme that adds the flexibility being discussed.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org

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