Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 16:07:00 -0500 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Shells for you and shells for me Message-ID: <v04011703b25a8ff095ff@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <19981026125133.A2717@netmonger.net> References: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9810252016090.375-100000@picnic.mat.net>; from Chuck Robey on Sun, Oct 25, 1998 at 08:27:24PM -0500 <3633C8F8.EF8E14D5@null.net> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9810252016090.375-100000@picnic.mat.net>
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At 12:51 PM -0500 10/26/98, Christopher Masto wrote: > Just keep the damn /bin/sh we have now. Who actually uses it as > their login shell? Nobody. It's there to write /bin/sh scripts, > which by their very nature should be FreeBSD-specific or else > extremely lowest-common-denominator. If there are bugs affecting > the latter, they can be fixed. Do people really want better "sh > compatability"? I don't think that's what this is about. To give a recent example I've stumbled across, a few 'autoconf'- generated scripts will not work under freebsd, due to the way our /bin/sh handles IFS processing. This is more than a someone wanting tab completion or ~ expansion in /bin/sh, it's a practical issue when porting software. The problem with this particular example is that 'autoconf' is probably wrong in what it's doing. Sure, it works on most platforms, but various standards imply that it should not work. Also, there is another way for it to do what it wants to do, which is certain to work in all cases were it currently works, as well as FreeBSD's '/bin/sh' and a few other shells. Hmm, seems to me I had an important point to make when I started to write this, but I've been interrupted enough times that I've now forgotten what it was... :-) No, I remember. I disagree with the idea that /bin/sh scripts "should" be FreeBSD-specific. There is nothing to be gained by having /bin/sh dramatically different than what other OS's have for /bin/sh, precisely because so many people use that for "common" (cross-platform) scripts. At the same time, changing /bin/sh is disruptive enough that I agree with Chris's later comment. If we do come across something which is a problem, then it would be much less disruptive (or at least, "less scary") to just fix that problem in our /bin/sh than it is to abandon the one we have for some completely different one. And we should get the autoconf guys to fix the way they generate some of their scripts... :-) --- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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