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>]

Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org> writes:

> > On the other hand, my suggestion (make bash- and dash-compatibility a
> > "must" and general POSIX-shell compatibility a "should") would mean an
> > unknown number of bugs appear, but at least they'd just be normal
> > bugs, not RC.  Which I think is a reasonable compromise.
> 
> And then it's the responsibility of all maintainer scripts to work
> around bugs in both bash and dash.  I'm strongly opposed to the
> suggestion of a list of shells in policy rather than a list of rules
> that we actually intend to follow.

This would require simply changing the exact way that we specify the
requirement.  Right now the requirement is actually incoherent; a
requirement that referred to "only use the features of bash and dash"
seems fine, because the bugs in bash and dash are not features.

If a maintainer finds a big in dash, and it's a pain to work around,
it's a simple matter to just #!/bin/bash and be done with it.

thomas