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From: Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk>
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Re: POSIX shell and "portable"
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 16:19:28 +0000
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References: <472B29B9.50002@gentoo.org> <200711021730.21089.bo.andresen@zlin.dk> <1194022333.3029.3.camel@uberpc.marples.name> <200711021817.32146.bo.andresen@zlin.dk> <1194024908.3029.6.camel@uberpc.marples.name> <20071103001922.GD1907@gentoo.org> <1194051966.16405.16.camel@uberpc.marples.name>
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Roy Marples wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-11-03 at 01:19 +0100, Fabian Groffen wrote:
>> Please stop calling it "more portable". The shell code you see in
>> configure can in a way be called "portable". Your POSIX compliant stuff
>> isn't. In fact, by stating #!/bin/sh you actually make the code useless
>> on a number of platforms, where it would have been working fine if there
>> just were #!/bin/bash there.
>>
>> 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.
>
> Another way of looking at it is that you're forcing specific tools on
> people, where I am asking people to use standard POSIX tools.
>
No, you're waging a campaign to get all Gentoo ebuilds in sh, by pointing
out how certain constructs can be rewritten in sh. If your campaign is
successful, all Gentoo devs will be forced to write in sh. Saying it's
standard when the standard is a) pretty old and b) pretty minimalistic
doesn't make it a tool "that's up to the job".
> I guess it's because I'm an Engineer and you probably aren't. If the
> tool isn't up to the job, then fix the tool. If the tool doesn't claim
> any standards compliance then feel free to change it.
>
Er there are two conflicting statements there. The *standard* isn't up to
the job, in that use of the sh syntax you promote leads to longer
maintenance times and increased likelihood of bugs, since the code is
counter-intuitive (aka fugly ;)
As Mr Copa said "bash itself is portable."
As a _software_ engineer I am vehemently opposed for the reasons given. The
reason for my vehemence is that I don't want to see Gentoo devs spending
extra time working around limitations in sh (which is a *base* standard)
when really there are /far/ better technical ways round getting, say,
ebuilds installed on a Linux Phone (and I have seen *no* other use-case
which merits use of sh in package management; it's hardly our core
user-base, is it?)
--
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