Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 16:25:53 -0500 (EST) From: Chuck Robey <chuckr@mat.net> To: Studded <Studded@gorean.org> Cc: Brian Feldman <green@zone.syracuse.net>, "Dag-Erling C. =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?=" <dag-erli@ifi.uio.no>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: sh and ~ expansion Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9810251621250.375-100000@picnic.mat.net> In-Reply-To: <36339533.49D5D9F0@gorean.org>
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On Sun, 25 Oct 1998, Studded wrote: > Brian Feldman wrote: > > > > Why don't we just use pdksh? > > Oh dear. I've had in the back of my mind for a long time to suggest us > replacing our pseudo-implementation of sh with Bash in posix mode, but I > haven't made the suggestion because I can think of at least 3 holy wars > that it would start right off hand, and I can guess that there are more > I don't know about. :) In my opinion if we're going to replace our sh > with anything it should be something as posix as possible. That is the > trend amongst the various vendors and right now there is no clear winner > between continuing with "historic" bourne shell implementations and > posix versions, although the trend is toward posix and that direction > seems to have the momentum. Doug, think about this ... sh is used universally because it's the lowest common denominator, and all scripts are done that way. Any change to our default 'sh' must, first and foremost, work with distributed shell scripts. Posix compatibility has nearly nothing at all to do with that, and bash is an extremely poor choice for that. Posix compatibility in this case is a buzzword only, and not a goal to be considered as good. General sh compatibility is the only touchstone here. Pdksh happens to hold a position close (but not, as Tor Egge pointed out, completely) sh compatible, so it could be at least considered as a candidate. Bash, unfortunately, isn't in that league. > > Amongst the publicly available shells Bash has a lot of virtues for a > project like this. It's one of the older public shells, has a broad and > deep installed base, and is being actively developed. It incorporates > the best features from other shells, and posix compliance is a high > priority. Some may think that the fact linux uses bash would be a > drawback, personally I think it's an advantage since linux users who > migrate would have a common point of contact. Finally, I've gathered > from various comments that Chet (the principle maintainer for Bash) has > made that he uses FreeBSD as his main platform. :) > > The other thing I would suggest is that anyone who's serious about > making something like this happen read comp.unix.shell for about a month > before the debate continues. There is a lot of information available, > and if we're serious about making this kind of change those making the > decision should be as well informed as possible. > > Doug > -- > *** Chief Operations Officer, DALnet IRC network *** > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message > > ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include any kind of voice or data chuckr@glue.umd.edu | communications topic, C programming, and Unix. 213 Lakeside Drive Apt T-1 | Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run Journey2 and picnic (FreeBSD-current) (301) 220-2114 | and jaunt (NetBSD). ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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