Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 14:24:29 +0100 From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@pobox.com> To: Bruce M Simpson <bms@spc.org> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: boot banner project Message-ID: <20050504132429.GA2105@uk.tiscali.com> In-Reply-To: <20050504113817.GD22956@empiric.icir.org> References: <6.1.0.6.2.20050427001118.0327cd50@cobalt.antimatter.net> <52515.216.177.243.42.1114586501.localmail@webmail.dnswatch.com> <d904a5e7050428062443496e3@mail.gmail.com> <61359.216.177.243.35.1114722481.localmail@webmail.dnswatch.com> <20050429105416.GA94049@wedge.madpilot.net> <d904a5e705042912342621236b@mail.gmail.com> <20050502195456.GA1226@uk.tiscali.com> <17015.43023.924186.422635@roam.psg.com> <20050504094000.GA1143@uk.tiscali.com> <20050504113817.GD22956@empiric.icir.org>
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On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 12:38:18PM +0100, Bruce M Simpson wrote:
> On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 10:40:00AM +0100, Brian Candler wrote:
> > Now the only essential package to install is a POSIX shell with interactive
> > command history - i.e. "bash" - and it looks like /bin/sh has now gained
> > that capability too, although sadly not tab-completion.
>
> tcsh is in the base system and has that capability.
Except:
(1) it's not enabled by default (you need "set autolist", which I only
discovered recently)
(2) it's not a POSIX shell.
For me, (2) is serious. I don't want to use a different syntax for
redirecting I/O, setting environment variables and looping over arguments,
just to get tab-completion.
I have done quite a lot of teaching of FreeBSD to newbies (both Unix newbies
and ex-Linux users). It's a source of frustration that root's shell is
different to a normal user's shell, and also that root's shell is not POSIX.
Most Linux distributions solve this simply by using bash for both.
Now that /bin/sh has command history, I'd definitely vote for that to be
made the default shell for root in FreeBSD-6, and then csh can be left to
die in peace as it should have done years ago :-)
Regards,
Brian.
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