Bug#562506: init scripts should not use set -e
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.3.0
Severity: minor
Currently, Debian Policy makes a general statement that all Bourne shell
scripts should start with set -e and does not (so far as I can see) make
an exception for init scripts. I've seen several init scripts use set -e,
which is usually a bad idea. It assumes that the shell function libraries
used for status reporting are "set -e"-clean, which they may not be, and
it causes the init scripts to exit in non-obvious ways and produce lots of
debugging headache.
I think there's already a consensus that set -e is the wrong approach for
init scripts and instead the exit status of key commands should be checked
instead. I think Policy should reflect that consensus somewhere in the
section on init scripts.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-686-bigmem (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
debian-policy depends on no packages.
debian-policy recommends no packages.
Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii doc-base 0.9.5 utilities to manage online documen
-- no debconf information
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