From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Apr 15 20:30:49 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from phoenix.welearn.com.au (phoenix.welearn.com.au [139.130.44.81]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C71AF37B92E for ; Sat, 15 Apr 2000 20:30:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sue@phoenix.welearn.com.au) Received: (from sue@localhost) by phoenix.welearn.com.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) id NAA69159; Sun, 16 Apr 2000 13:30:26 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from sue) Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 13:30:22 +1000 From: Sue Blake To: Christian Weisgerber Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/contrib/tcsh - Imported sources Message-ID: <20000416133021.P3179@welearn.com.au> Mail-Followup-To: Christian Weisgerber , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG References: <200004150441.VAA23755@freefall.freebsd.org> <8dap2t$1ome$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i In-Reply-To: <8dap2t$1ome$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de>; from Christian Weisgerber on Sun, Apr 16, 2000 at 12:05:17AM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sun, Apr 16, 2000 at 12:05:17AM +0200, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > David E. O'Brien wrote: > > > Import the latest version of the 44BSD C-shell -- tcsh-6.09. > > I'm unhappy about this for a reason that hasn't even been mentioned > in the monster thread that clogged -arch: (And who would have thought to look for it there anyway.) > Including tcsh in the base system means that people will use it. > csh clearly isn't good enough for people to use, and when they > looked around for a better interactive shell, many found their way > to proper sh-ish shell like bash or ksh. Now they will stay with > tcsh instead. And they will write (t)csh scripts. Importing tcsh > gives new life to a shell family that should die, die, die. > > From a shell advocacy point of view, importing tcsh was the very > worst thing that could happen. Absolutely! This kind of shell does not belong in the base system. There are many dangers, and everyone knows how bloody shell wars can become once someone's favourite is given the limelight. Either include them _all_ or Leave them all in ports where they belong! This looks like a poorly thought out hasty move based on some old timers' rigid preferences rather than on appropriateness as a base for the greatest range of user types. It might look like that to others, too. Take it out, shove it in some RedHat style FreeBSD if you like, but not in the base system. I like my minimal installs usable but unbloated. Our slightly enhanced version of sh achieves that. The people who have most difficulty changing their initial shell (due to shortage of both FreeBSD and UNIX experience) ask for the up arrow to give command history, and for commandline editing. Both of these can be achieved with the Bourne shell with a decent .profile (which we've had fixed just recently). The people who dummy-spit about needing tab completion generally have enough UNIX experience to go sort themselves out with their own familiar shell. Also, from a pedagogical perspective there are strong arguments for at least starting out with a Bourne style shell rather than teaching one style for scripts and another for interactive use. I'd go out of my way to avoid teaching beginners on a tcsh system. A well set up sh is perfectly adequate as a default shell. There's some good reasons for considering bash too, but I'd like some safe easy way to remove it from my more minimal installs. Just because we all agree that csh is bad, doesn't mean that any person's favourite full featured shell should be rushed into the base system. -- Regards, -*Sue*- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message