Bug#267142: debian-policy: Sections 10.4 and 6.1 are inconsistent (Posix doesn't say what you think it says)

[Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net>]

Wouter Verhelst <wouter@grep.be> writes:

> Well, yeah, theoretically a shell could do that. However, in this
> specific example, I would consider such a shell to be horribly broken.
> 'debconf' is a name which is clearly chosen to avoid namespace conflicts
> such as the ones you're suggesting; and seen the fact that debconf is
> quite well known right now, I consider it extremely unlikely for that to
> be implemented in such a way.

But this is exactly the problem.  A shell might well do what dash
does, and override a non-Posix program, but in a minimalizing way
(perhaps, in the assumption that people only need the minimum thing).

> Of course, that's not what you meant; but I'd think that other examples
> would need to be examined on a case-by-case basis, and dealt with as
> they occur, using a fair dosis of common sense.

Why not just fix the problem entirely?  That's what I meant by saying
that this option 5 doesn't work: it doesn't actually fix the problem.

We could always add a new thing that said "stick to Posix test, too",
and that would solve *this* case, but do we really want to have to do
this piecemeal?

By contrast, listing a bunch of shells directly means that policy
doesn't have to get into the nitty gritty--which can only be a good
thing!