Bug#889676: xvfb: xvfb-run script contains an unnecessary dependency on the external tool "which"
Package: xvfb
Version: 2:1.19.6-1
Severity: minor
Arch Linux has imported the xvfb-run script from Debian's package, but
our package dependencies do not mandate that the "which" utility be
installed. OTOH we do have it in our base package group, which users are
expected to have installed, although there is a bit of bikeshedding
about whether these unstated dependencies should actually be explicitly
listed... See the following xvfb bugreport on our bugtracker:
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/56997
All that being said, this immediately made me think, why is the script
using `which` at all, rather than the POSIX `command -v` which is far
more portable as any #!/bin/sh shell has this as a builtin. It also
provides a micro-optimization by avoiding an external subprocess.
Please consider making this script more reusable by switching to the
POSIX shell builtin.
Example output on a system which does not have /usr/bin/which available:
$ xvfb-run some_command
/usr/bin/xvfb-run: line 139: which: command not found
xvfb-run: error: xauth command not found
(This error message seems rather redundant.)
--
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User
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