Bug#267142: huh?

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

Clint Adams <schizo@debian.org> writes:

> No, that was better.  I don't think it's accurate to consider "debconf"
> a non-POSIX shell feature upon which maintainer scripts rely unless such
> maintainer scripts rely on the enhancements present in the pdksh-specific
> "debconf" builtin.

I didn't say that "debconf" is a non-POSIX shell feature.  Policy 10.4
doesn't say that anyway.  It says your script should work with any
Posix-compliant shell.  A script that says "debconf" doesn't.

Or, under my interpretation, it says that you don't need to worry
about whether a shell supports a command as a builtin or not (though
obviously you cannot *rely* on it being builtin), in which case
"debconf" and "test -a" are both fine.  But then policy 10.4 is not
achieving its goals.

> > Do you have an alternative way to specify what features a maintainer
> > script may rely on?  I proposed several in my original report that
> > would all do the job.
> 
> I would be more specific about what "POSIX" means in 10.4, but I don't
> think that would solve your problem.

Well then if you don't like the list-of-shells approach, but you can't
think of anything better, then that leaves list-of-shells as the most
popular alternative.  (And I don't have any preferences about which
shells are in that list, provided bash is.)

I agree that it might also be a good idea to be more exact about what
"Posix shell" means in 10.4, and I'll do my best to have that
reflected in any redrafting of the section. 

Thomas