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:

> > Policy requires restriction to Posix-specified shell features.  "test"
> > is not a shell feature according to Posix.
> 
> POSIX mentions "test" both as a Korn shell builtin and as a Bourne shell
> builtin.

What it mentions for the Korn shell of course doesn't matter here.
Can you give me a reference to the latter?  I looked carefully, and I
only found it mentioned as a utility.

> "debconf" is not specified by POSIX.  A #!/bin/sh maintainer script
> calling "debconf" does not suddenly violate policy if bash implements a
> "debconf" builtin.  Nor does bash violate policy by doing so.  

Policy does not say that you must restrict yourself to Posix features
in general; it only says rather that you must restrict yourself to
Posix features in the shell.  Posix, AFAICT, does not describe "test"
as a shell thing at all, any more than "ls".

But you seem to indicate above that I may have missed something; can
you show me the section where Posix describes "test" as a shell
builtin?