Re: Bug#267142: debian-policy: Sections 10.4 and 6.1 are inconsistent (Posix doesn't say what you think it says)
On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 04:10:06 +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> I do not think that this correctly describes reality, as there are many
> people who are not willing to support posh in their packages, on the
> ground of it being an useless exercise in blind adherence to a
> standard and not representative of real world shells.
I only know one person who has this attitude.
> Writing portable shell scripts is useful, and writing scripts which can
> be run by a shell faster than bash is useful too. There is no use in
> writing POSIX-compatible scripts just because you feel like doing it.
One reason to require posh compatibility is that this increases the
chances that other shells can be added to the list in the future. A shell
can only be added to the list if it implements all the behaviors that are
common to all the shells already in the list. (These are the behaviors
upon which 10.4-compliant /bin/sh-using scripts are, or may be, relying.)
Including posh in the list decreases the number of behaviors that are
common to all shells on the list, thus decreasing the number of behaviors
that an additional shell has to implement in exactly the same way.
--
Thomas Hood
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