Joseph Kowalski wrote: > > > From: Roland Mainz <roland.mainz at nrubsig.org> > ... > > Joseph Kowalski wrote: > > > > From: Roland Mainz <roland.mainz at nrubsig.org> > > [snip] > > > We all know there are some thorny issues around kshXX because we've > > > looked for simple answers in the past. > > > > Based on the stories I heared so far Sun let this issue slip far too > > long (and the term "damn angry" is an understatment about how some > > customers feel about this issue and the suggestion to use the > > half-broken dtksh didn't made this better - see > > > http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/ksh93-integration-discuss/2006-September/0 > 00837.html) > > ... ;-( > > No argument here, except the IMHO dtksh is more than half-broken. 8^)
Well, I offered to fix it. The solution to almost all of the problems is to rip-out the ksh93d- alpha basis of ksh93 and replace it with a more recent version (that was at least the "cure" for HP/UX). And I am still wondering why it is so difficult for Sun to do the same. > The trouble is, the customers who don't have their way are the ones > you hear. If we were to replace sh (or even ksh) blindly we would hear > from the other customers who value compatibility more highly. One is > well advised not to assume any blog or mail group, populated by those > of a fairly common interest represent anything close to a concensus > view of the entire set of consumers. > > You can't make everyone happy. Sun has traditionally valued Schwab more > than Joe-Hacker. > > However, we all need to remember, we are just talking about a new utility > here. The fact that the language it interprets is 99% compatible with > existing utilities is irrelevant. All that's relevant is that the > remaining 1% is significant to a non-negligable set of consumers. > > As this thread keeps pointing out, the real dicsussion will come (as > Don so elequently foreshadowed) when we talk about replacing something > call "ksh" or "sh" with something else. Yes... but at some point this decision need to be made. The current Solaris /usr/bin/ksh is considered a pain and has become more or less seperated from all other ksh88 versions and even those at Sun who had to maintain it in the past consider it simply as unmaintainable. This is why I am trying to make clear that any forking of the code (except the built system which using the SysV/OS/NET-Makefile stuff instead of the AST build system) should be AVOIDED at all costs. There is a large community which develops and maintains ksh93 and Sun should work together with this community - otherwise we quickly end-up with another ksh monstrosity which generates nightmares for those at Sun who have to work on that code. ---- Bye, Roland -- __ . . __ (o.\ \/ /.o) roland.mainz at nrubsig.org \__\/\/__/ MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix programmer /O /==\ O\ TEL +49 641 7950090 (;O/ \/ \O;)