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From: Michael Haubenwallner <haubi@gentoo.org>
To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] POSIX shell and "portable"
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:21:50 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1194268910.6977.86.camel@sapc154> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1194257626.4196.9.camel@uberlaptop.marples.name>

On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 10:13 +0000, Roy Marples wrote:
> While I still have access to the u@g.o email, I'll respond here.
> 
> 
> On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 10:22 +0100, Michael Haubenwallner wrote:
> > On Sat, 2007-11-03 at 00:47 +0000, Roy Marples wrote:
> > 
> > As it seems too few people really accept your suggestion, I feel it's
> > time for me to chime in too, although I don't know what exactly POSIX-sh
> > standard defines.
> 
> > Agreed, but (speaking for alt/prefix):
> > 
> > Alt/prefix is designed to (mainly) work without superuser access on the
> > target machine, which may also be Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and the like.
> > /bin/sh on such a machine is not POSIX-shell, but old bourne-shell
> > (unfortunately with bugs often).
> > And it is _impossible_ to have sysadmins to get /bin/sh a POSIX-Shell
> > nor to have that bugs fixed.
> > 
> > But yes, on most machines there is /bin/ksh, which IMHO is POSIX
> > compliant (maybe also with non-fixable bugs).
> > 
> > Although I do not know yet for which _installed_ scripts it'd be really
> > useful to have them non-bash in alt/prefix, I appreciate the discussion.
> > 
> > To see benefits for alt/prefix too, it _might_ require that discussion
> > going from requiring /bin/sh being POSIX-sh towards being
> > bourne-shell...
> 
> Actually you missed the mark completely.
> Nothing in the tree itself specifies what shell to use - instead it's
> the package manager. So the PM on Gentoo/Linux/FreeBSD *could*
> be /bin/sh and on the systems where /bin/sh is not possible to change to
> a POSIX compliant shell then it can still use /bin/bash or wherever it's
> installed.

So "have the installed scripts to not require bash" is another topic ?

Ok then:
Given that we want to have the tree "more generic unix-able":
What is the benefit from having the tree being POSIX- but not
bourne-shell compatible, so one still needs bash on Solaris/AIX/HP-UX ?
Because I'd say those three are the biggest substitutes for "unix",
while I'd call *BSD and Linux just "unix derivates" (although with
enhancements)...

> 
> This also applies to the userland tools. If the ebuild or eclass *has*
> to use the GNU variants then it should either adjust $PATH so that it
> finds them first, or it prefixes them all with g, like it does on
> Gentoo/FreeBSD.
> 
> None of this is technically challenging in itself, it's just that the
> key people who would have to do the work to make this possible have
> already given a flat out no.

In the early prefix days I had some portage enhancement, providing a
wrapper-function around all coreutils/findutils/diffutils/grep/others,
trying to find a GNU implementation for them. And if not found, try to
map some args to the native ones ("xargs -r" fex - although didn't work
as shell-function).
But then we decided to always provide USERLAND=GNU in prefix and this
portage patch was thrown away.

> 
> > > > It seems to me that you actually mean "more FreeBSD-able" or something,
> > > > which is a high price to pay for a relatively small part of Gentoo as a
> > > > whole.
> > > 
> > > More embeddable.
> > > More BSDable.
> > > More Linuxable - bash isn't the only linux shell, there are plently of
> > > others.
> > 
> > More (generic) unix-able.
> 
> Exactly so :)

Not really as long as not being bourne shell compatible like autoconf's
configure. I won't trust to have a POSIX shell like /bin/ksh everywhere,
but /bin/sh only, which usually is just a bourne shell on "unix".

/haubi/
-- 
Michael Haubenwallner
Gentoo on a different level

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list



  reply	other threads:[~2007-11-05 13:25 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 38+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2007-11-02 13:44 [gentoo-dev] More general interface to use flags Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
2007-11-02 14:04 ` Roy Marples
2007-11-02 14:27   ` Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
2007-11-02 14:52     ` Roy Marples
2007-11-02 14:59   ` Mike Frysinger
2007-11-02 15:30     ` Roy Marples
2007-11-02 15:38       ` Mike Frysinger
2007-11-02 15:48         ` Roy Marples
2007-11-02 15:58           ` Mike Frysinger
2007-11-02 16:10             ` Roy Marples
2007-11-02 16:30               ` Bo Ørsted Andresen
2007-11-02 16:52                 ` Roy Marples
2007-11-02 17:17                   ` Bo Ørsted Andresen
2007-11-02 17:35                     ` Roy Marples
2007-11-03  0:19                       ` [gentoo-dev] POSIX shell and "portable" Fabian Groffen
2007-11-03  0:47                         ` Roy Marples
2007-11-05  9:22                           ` Michael Haubenwallner
2007-11-05 10:13                             ` Roy Marples
2007-11-05 13:21                               ` Michael Haubenwallner [this message]
2007-11-05 20:21                                 ` Mike Frysinger
2007-11-05 23:18                                   ` Roy Marples
2007-11-06  7:12                                     ` Ciaran McCreesh
2007-11-06  7:40                                       ` Roy Marples
2007-11-06  8:03                                         ` Ciaran McCreesh
2007-11-06  8:25                                           ` Roy Marples
2007-11-06  9:04                                     ` Michael Haubenwallner
2007-11-05 20:32                                 ` Roy Marples
2007-11-05 20:55                                   ` Fabian Groffen
2007-11-05 22:27                                   ` Mike Frysinger
2007-11-03  0:57                         ` Natanael copa
2007-11-03  1:06                         ` Roy Marples
2007-11-03 16:19                           ` [gentoo-dev] " Steve Long
2007-11-03  1:10                         ` [gentoo-dev] " Roy Marples
     [not found]                       ` <b41005390711022225i4f30bb01jbf5a040c60c4b088@mail.gmail.com>
2007-11-03  5:26                         ` Fwd: [gentoo-dev] More general interface to use flags Alec Warner
2007-11-03 21:57                           ` Mike Frysinger
2007-11-04 10:54 ` [gentoo-dev] " Steve Long
2007-11-04 21:54   ` Alec Warner
2007-11-06 11:50     ` Steve Long

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