-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On 13 Nov 1997, James Troup wrote:
> Santiago Vila Doncel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > In fact, I am not worried by the fact that bash is essential or not. > > I am worried by the fact that so many packages depend on it. > > I suggest you file bugs on those which needlessly do. Well, will they be "legitimate" as `wishlist' bugs? Or they will be refused by saying "I don't think it is important, since bash is essential" and closed immediately? If bash is essential, why don't we just use always #!/bin/bash? :-) This way we would not have to check whether it contains bashisms or not... I mean: Do we consider a "good thing" that a shell script does not need bash? > > If so many packages depend on bash, users who symlink sh > > ->someotherPOSIXshell will never be able to get rid of bash, if they > > do not like it. > > You can't rid of a lot of base, so what? (I hope you aren't going to > argue that ash or something else similar should replace bash in base) Not all packages from base have to be essential. Being essential and belonging to base are different things. > > So if we have to admit bashisms in debian/rules, we are in fact > > saying "Debian packages will always be for Debian/Linux > > distributions". > > Uh, no. What we're saying is Debian Packages will always be for > Debian distributions. What's wrong with that? You have to port a lot of packages for one to work, when there is really no need. You can't port a single package. Packages are supposed to be "independent". This independence if what makes them portable. I still think that talking about "Debian packages" has sense without having to port the whole Debian distribution. > [ ... ] > > > I still don't see why people who want to port *some* Debian packages > > to Solaris (not the *entire* Debian distribution) should be forced > > to port bash as the first package, if /bin/sh has (or should have) > > the same basic functionality. > > Solaris /bin/sh *doesn't*, your case would be a more interesting if > you used an example which had a POSIX sh as /bin/sh. Yes, Solaris may be a bad example. In this case I would suggest to symlink sh -> bash... But the example will be still valid for systems having a POSIX shell as /bin/sh. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: latin1 iQCVAgUBNGs4FiqK7IlOjMLFAQHPqgP/aSUOcSNKfMiglIWD7cP5xUSncc63WcXt VS0qabu9kdZk+8Smn/IdnA3zWf8V8IBMrIenqxvKa1i1iqRjZlrH1iMO4xCSH4OR EveF3HDPmHK+XOWkOP3XnaftuBSzum/zlMIKW9QaNbdmSc9sj72QZuNbE6qh9ovL vM7/JCXiU2w= =mPKD -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
