Bug#267142: debian-policy: Sections 10.4 and 6.1 are inconsistent (Posix doesn't say what you think it says)
Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org> writes:
> > common, which is undisputed. The question is not what is common; the
> > question is what is required and what is permitted from a Posix
> > shell.
>
> Ah, I see. I thought that that was covered with the lists of builtins
> in bug#270868.
Not quite. That gives a list of builtins which is required (and which
does not include test, btw); more importantly Posix allows anything to
be a builtin.
As it happens, I think bug 270868 is crazy; there is no bug that posh
has a test builtin. It is the case that posh has a test builtin which
is inconsistent with the Debian version of "test", but we have no rule
about whether Debian shells should remain consistent with the rest of
Debian, and I'm not interested in proposing one.
So don't associate bug 267142 with 270868; the latter is nutso.
> > Exactly. It's possibly for "defconf" to be that too. This is exactly
> > why the current language of the Policy manual fails.
>
> Only if you claim that policy prohibits you from running "debconf".
> Otherwise it's irrelevant.
See below.
> > So the problem here only happens with respect to the extremely broad
> > permission from Posix to buildin any or all utilities. This is not a
> > mistake in Posix, but it was a mistake for the Debian Policy Manual to
> > rely on Posix as it currently does, to be specifying a
> > "Posix-compatible shell". Which is why my original bug report says
> > "Posix doesn't say what you think it does".
>
> Is there an actual practical problem here?
Yes. There are two possible interpretations of Policy here.
One interpretation would prohibit the use of test -a; but would also
prohibit the use of "debconf" and many many other things.
The other interpretation (mine, in fact) would allow test -a, in which
case there are people running around filing bogus bug reports. But
this interpretation does not serve the important goals of Policy
section 10.4, which is why I filed bug 267142, to attempt to find a
way to satisfy the goals of 10.4 cleanly.
Someone else thought this meant that posh shouldn't buildin test,
which in my opinion is entirely irrelevant.
Thomas
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