On Feb 6, 2008 4:14 PM, Kyle McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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,
Don't know; don't care. All I know is that other platforms are moving that way and it can only be a good thing in the long-term. The long-term view is that other platforms will have a POSIX shell at #!/bin/sh and OpenSolaris, in my view, should have one as well to meet those changing market conditions. > 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. I disagree. > 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. Some things become standards because the market adopts them. Not every "standard" comes about as the result of a committee; some come about by changes in the market. > 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. That is not really a practical option in the long term. We can't force everyone else to do things our way; we must adapt to the majority way where possible. Just as the UNIX certification has become largely irrelevant in today's market (though is still valuable to certain parts of it). > Are different implementations of the Bourne Shell incompatible? Yes. *Some*, but not all, are. > Is /bin/sh the tradition location/name of the Bourne Shell? Yes. On some platforms. > > 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. ...and there will be a better chance of that happening as time goes on. -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." - Robert Orben _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
