Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 13:41:55 -0600 From: "Jacques A. Vidrine" <n@nectar.com> To: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca> Cc: "Brian F. Feldman" <green@FreeBSD.ORG>, Will Andrews <will@physics.purdue.edu>, FreeBSD Architecture <arch@FreeBSD.ORG>, bde@zeta.org.au, obrien@nuxi.com, nate@yogotech.com Subject: Re: ksh93 (was: Re: cvs commit: src/gnu/usr.bin/binutils/ar ...) Message-ID: <20010304134155.A72948@spawn.nectar.com> In-Reply-To: <200103031650.f23GoWS12086@cwsys.cwsent.com>; from Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca on Sat, Mar 03, 2001 at 08:50:13AM -0800 References: <20010303091958.A68223@spawn.nectar.com> <200103031650.f23GoWS12086@cwsys.cwsent.com>
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On Sat, Mar 03, 2001 at 08:50:13AM -0800, Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group wrote: [snip] > If we are going to import ksh93 into the source tree, which I think is > a good thing, my vote is # 4 or # 4a. For something as critical as a > shell that is used virtually everywhere I think 100% backward > compatibility must be maintained and therefore we should keep ash in > FreeBSD. Boot scripts can reference #!/bin/ksh a short while after > notifying people on -stable (a plan would be nice). /bin/sh should be > renamed to /bin/ash with a /bin/sh hard link linked to it. Later we > can change the /bin/sh hard link to /bin/ksh, while keeping /bin/ash > for backward compatibility (if anyone has forgotten my point about > compatibility by now see my print example above). > > Hopefully I covered it all. Thanks for your summary. I would not support the import of any new shell unless it was (ultimately) for the replacement of /bin/tcsh or /bin/sh. We don't need "another" shell, but I do think we need a "better" shell. I don't expect builtins to be a significant issue. If someone is unfortunate enough to be using a binary with the name of a shell built-in in their scripts, and is not using a full path to that script, then the script would need to be modified. I don't think that in reality this will be much heartache. ksh is attractive because it is quite possibly the most standardized shell in existence, and at the same time is one of the better shell programming languages. Potentially it could make some uses of Perl during the build go away (David Korn says: ``For the most part ksh93 has the functionality of perl 5 and arguably a more readable syntax.'' I don't agree, but it isn't that far off). Cheers, -- Jacques Vidrine / n@nectar.com / jvidrine@verio.net / nectar@FreeBSD.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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