On Wed, 2010-05-19 at 23:38 -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
> On Wednesday 19 May 2010 22:34:09 Peter Tyser wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > > > Maybe some other shells happen to allow read without arguments, but its
> > > > a crapshoot as its not a standard.
> > >
> > > Which is why you say #!/bin/bash and then teach busybox's shells to
> > > understand the name "bash".  The name is a promise of an API beyond
> > > Posix.
> >
> > That's fine by me, adding optional support for bashisms to busybox's
> > shells seems like a good idea.  However, how does that relate to the
> > #!/bin/bash vs #!/bin/sh debate in build scripts we're having (or
> > hopefully had?)?  I'd guess the vast majority of developers don't use
> > busybox's shell when building busybox itself.
> 
> I do.  If the development environment you're creating isn't capable of self-
> hosting, it's not finished.

That's your opinion.  And for what its worth, you need a non-busybox
shell for the first build, which detracts from that opinion.
Additionally, the complaint about not being able to use busybox's shell
to build busybox
(http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-May/072479.html) was an
argument to use *POSIX* only, not to make busybox bash-compatible as
you're arguing.  Sure, we could either:
1. Add all of bash's functionality to busybox and use bash for scripts
(Your preference.  Seems like a good goal, but you're targeting a
moving, non-standard target (correct me if I'm mistaken).)
2. Using POSIX scripting and use sh for scripts (What most others are
including me, are arguing for).

<snip>

> > Or am I missing something?  I thought we had reached the
> > consensus that we should strive to remove bashisms from the build
> > scripts.  Is this still the case?
> 
> Given that I've argued consistently against that position during this entire 
> discussion, I find your idea of "consensus" somewhat strange.

If my memory is correct, I think the vast majority of people have been
in favor of not using bashisms, including Denys at this point:
http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-May/072495.html

Thus I thought everyone was on the same page after Denys email.  Adding
bashism support to busybox is fine by me, but my understanding was that
was a separate issue to the debate about what shell we should be using
for build scripts.

Other than you, I haven't heard other arguing for using bashisms.
There's been a lot of emails, maybe I'm missing some though.

Could you *concisely* state why you think we should be using bash for
the build scripts?  Maybe a list of pros/cons?  We need to resolve this
debate...

Best,
Peter

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