Shawn Walker wrote: > On Feb 6, 2008 3:37 PM, Kyle McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Shawn Walker wrote: >> >>> On Feb 6, 2008 3:18 PM, a b <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> >>> Oh, and as far as the enterprise argument, go talk to some of the >>> enterprise sysadmins who post here; they hate that /bin/sh isn't >>> anywhere near portable across systems. >>> >>> >>> >> It's also not part of any standard, so how could it really? >> > > That doesn't excuse having a good standard shell for /bin/sh. > > What reason is there for the 'standard' shell to be named /bin/sh though?
When there is a standards compliant shell at another name that will work, >> If they want to write portable scripts they should use /bin/ksh. It's >> that simple. >> > > They're not the ones who wrote the scripts from what I gather. They > are the ones trying to use software across multiple systems. > > Trying to use software on a system other than what the developer intended is asking for problems. Obviously the developer didn't test it on these other platforms either. Given that there is no standard for how /bin/sh should work, it's possible that those scripts even take advantage of non-standard differences of the /bin/sh, and that they still won't work on strictly POSIX compliant /bin/sh that doesn't also emulate the other behaviors of the /bin/sh sheel they written for. If these scripts will magically start working when /bin/sh is ksh93 (which I doubt) then they'll also start working if the users edit them to start with #!/bin/ksh. And sinve that is (more?) standards compliant, that should still work on the platforms the scripts already work on. Is the bourne shell old? Yes. Are different implementations of the Bourne Shell incompatible? Yes. But also: Is /bin/sh the tradition location/name of the Bourne Shell? Yes. Platforms should feel free to stop including a /bin/sh altogether. There's no reason to have one if you don't want one. But what they replace it with shouldn't be called /bin/sh unless it is. > At least with a POSIX shell for /bin/sh, there is a far better chance > of getting scripts written by third parties to work. > > Only if they were written to only use strictly POSIX syntax. And if that's the case then they should also wrtie tehm to use the things the POSIX standard specifies in order to find the POSIX shell they want to run in. -Kyle _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
