[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: bash version in ebuilds/eclasses...non-compliance and what to do?

[Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk>]

Fabian Groffen wrote:

> On 20-12-2008 05:35:25 +0000, Steve Long wrote:
>> I note that bash-3.2_p17-r1 is stable on all the architectures that
>> 3.0-r12 lists (it just adds the two -fbsd archs as unstable.)
>> portage-2.1.4.5 requires at least that version (only unstable on mips as
>> against 2.1.1-r2) It might be worth skipping to 3.2, since that would
>> simplify regex handling.
> 
> The only problem we have there is that bash-3.2.17 only comes in patches
> on top of 3.2.  During bootstrap that's problematic, as gnu patch (or
> any other patch) might not be available, or simply b0rked.
> For that reason we bootstrap with a portage pre SVN revision 10460,
> which does not require >=3.2.17.
> See http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=229677#c11 on why PMS should
> require 3.2.17 over plain 3.2 if you decide to push the requirement
> update.
>
Yeah, that sounds great. Believe me I ran into troubles with early 3.2 ;)
which is why I'm deadset against unstable across the board.

Regex handling within BASH is quite important eg on cygwin where process
creation is expensive. While I'm happy keeping my scripts compatible across
3.x (they're not Gentoo-specific) ebuild syntax would be much more
perl-like if we were on 3.2.17+ (and would thus hold less gotchas for
people new to the format, as well as perhaps giving some old hands a bit of
new shiny;)

> We can work around it by using a self-made pre-patched tarball, though.
> 
Indeed, and they can be pushed out to stages pretty painlessly. If metro is
politically unacceptable, I'm sure releng could do it with catalyst;
somehow I doubt it's as hard to bootstrap as perl, but please don't flame
me if you have something to say; just _add_ something technical.

Happy Holidays to all those whom I don't /ignore ;-)