On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 12:03:18 +0100, Richard Braakman wrote:
> # ash compatibility is not a release goal for potato
> severity 57216 normal
I will accept your decision in this matter, however I strongly
disagree. Please consider the following excerpt from section 4.4 of the
Debian Policy Manual:
The standard shell interpreter `/bin/sh' may be a symbolic link to
any POSIX compatible shell. Thus, shell scripts specifying
`/bin/sh' as interpreter may only use POSIX features. If a script
requires non-POSIX features from the shell interpreter, the
appropriate shell has to be specified in the first line of the
script (e.g., `#!/bin/bash') and the package has to depend on the
package providing the shell (unless the shell package is marked
`Essential', e.g., in the case of bash).
Restrict your script to POSIX features when possible so that it
may use /bin/sh as its interpreter. If your script works with ash,
it's probably POSIX compliant, but if you are in doubt, use
/bin/bash.
I know for certain that a number of systems use ash as /bin/sh, and are
therefore likely to encounter this problem after updating to potato.
Because they are in compliance with Debian policy, I believe that it
would be a mistake to release potato with dselect's apt method known to
be broken due to the use of non-POSIX syntax in a /bin/sh script.
Anyway, I've said my piece, so I'll let it lie now... Cheers!
Attachment:
pgpQ0dpE3r0Ft.pgp
Description: PGP signature