Re: bash should not be essential

[Santiago Vila Doncel <sanvila@unex.es>]

Ian Jackson wrote:
> Santiago Vila Doncel:
> > bash is currently essential because there is no other POSIX
> > shell. Point.
> 
> No, that is not the (only) reason why bash is essential.  bash is also
> essential because it provides a fixed useful set of facilities for
> people to write init.d scripts, preinst scripts, &c., - ie, the same
> reason as perl-base is essential.

Any other POSIX shell would do as well.

Yes, bash is essential because we always *need* a POSIX shell. But GNU
bash provides *two* of them: /bin/sh and /bin/bash. Only /bin/sh should
be essential.

[ BTW: We could make bash non-essential by splitting the current bash
package in two: One providing /bin/sh (posix-shell, new essential package)
and another one providing /bin/bash (important, standard, optional or
whatever). So I think it *would* be possible ].


This is not the point, anyway. We could make bash non-essential, people
would add a Depends: line on bash, but since there is absolutely no policy
about shell scripts, people could still think that #!/bin/bash is as
"good" as #!/bin/sh.

I don't understand why you still insist that not using bash specific
features may make "life very difficult for people". The debian/rules
example of `hello' was not really more "difficult" to write without using
{ } than using them.

Do you still think that "the use of { } makes the rules files clearer and
avoids duplication"? In fact I don't see it adds clarity at all. You have
to *decipher* a { } construct to *understand* what it does.