/bin/sh alternative (was Re: Essentialness of awk)
On Sat, Sep 28, 2002 at 01:18:31PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote:
> Well, yes, more or less. In the example about gawk replacing mawk
> you'll see that at all times there is a working awk. I don't see
> a fundamental reason why this should not work for dash and bash.
It works for mawk/gawk because the alternatives mechanism is already
set up. The problem with dash/bash is not that alternatives wouldn't
work if it were set up that way. It's getting from where we are now
to the desired state. And I doubt it's impossible, but it's a lot of
work -- one attempt already failed and hosed a lot of people's
systems.
And the fact is that the current system, while less than ideal, does
work. The number of people who would benefit from an improved system
is actually pretty small -- I suspect that 99% of users (including
ourselves) are content with bash as /bin/sh. And the rest *can* do
what they want, it's just not as easy as it could be. So it's a lot
of work for not much gain.
OTOH, if you feel so strongly about it, perhaps you'll be motivated to
come up with a transition plan that works in all cases, and test it,
and present it to the appropriate maintainers. I certainly would not
object.
--
Chris Waters | Pneumonoultra- osis is too long
xtifr@debian.org | microscopicsilico- to fit into a single
or xtifr@speakeasy.net | volcaniconi- standalone haiku
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