Re: dash and hidden bashisms in configure scripts

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Andrej" == Andrej Shadura <andrew@shadura.me> writes:

    Andrej> Hi all, Yesterday I uploaded dash with LINENO feature
    Andrej> switched on again, which has the side effect of exposing
    Andrej> bashisms in configure scripts. Previously, they were
    Andrej> obscured by the fact that autoconf requires LINENO, so when
    Andrej> choosing a shell, it selected bash, not dash.

    Andrej> After some discussion on IRC I agreed that it would probably
    Andrej> be better to revert the change and upload it to experimental
    Andrej> instead. I will try and do a rebuild of potentially affected
    Andrej> packages to make sure we can fix them before I try enabling
    Andrej> LINENO again.

    Andrej> [1]: https://bugs.debian.org/582952 [2]:
    Andrej> https://bugs.debian.org/842242

    Andrej> -- Cheers, Andrej


I understand that it's generally better to fix bashisms in configure
scripts.
Is it possible to force autoconf to prefer bash for a given configure
script if it's difficult or undesirable to fix bashisms in a configure
script?

Yes, I realize that it limits portability to systems with bash.
And yet, there are a lot of systems with bash:-)