Bug#294962: Public service announcement about Policy 10.4
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This one time, at band camp, sean finney said:
> hi,
>
> On Wed, Aug 03, 2005 at 10:49:31AM +0200, Thomas Hood wrote:
> > Joey Hess wrote:
> > > Unless, of course, it's a shell library that would like to be
> > > reasonably portable without being wholey crippled by lack
> > > features that have been in every shell worth the name for ages.
> >
> > I know that the debconf library used "local" (#242011) and I agree
> > that "local" is an example of a shell feature whose use we should
> > not be discouraging. That's why it is proposed that "local" be
> > added (alongside "echo -n") as an exception to the POSIX-only rule
> > expressed in 10.4. (Both bash and dash support "local".) If you
> > agree then it would be helpful to mention this in #294962.
>
> i too, have been making profuse usage of "local" in development of
> some /bin/sh code libraries that i've been doing lately, and think of
> it as an important feature. of course important feature does not
> necessarily equal policy amendment, but i'd like to know either way so
> my code doesn't break on systems where /bin/sh has been replaced from
> a minimalistic shell.
ISTM that we can't reasonably do without local at this point, as debconf
and the lsb init libraries all use it, and by their nature, any other
useful shell libraries have to as well. If the project decides that we
can live without useful shell libraries in exchange for, er, nothing
much that I can see, then I guess we can rewrite the debconf and lsb
libraries, and just put big fat warnings all over the documentation
that say 'don't ever use this function or variable name in your code',
but it seems silly to me.
Just my 2c (soon to be 2p, so I guess my ramblings will be worth
slightly more :).
Take care,
--
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| ,''`. Stephen Gran |
| : :' : sgran@debian.org |
| `. `' Debian user, admin, and developer |
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