Re: Non-POSIX shells

[Sander Vesik <Sander Vesik Sun COM>]

On 5 Mar 2002, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> 
> ERDI Gergo <cactus cactus rulez org> writes:
> > What's the official word on non-POSIX shells and their relation to
> > Makefiles and Autoconf scripts? Can't we simply require a POSIX shell? (we
> > also require some external-to-GNOME libraries (the image loader libraries
> > pop to my mind), so this wouldn't be earth-shattering)
> > 
> > I'm asking because of http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=73381
> > 
> 
> If we're going to require something funky it should be a reasonable
> build tool instead of make/autoconf/libtool jury-rigging. ;-)
> 
> I don't think there's a reason to make Solaris users install bash,
> it's easy to use `` instead of $().

Solaris users may well have bash installed, but that doesn't help *unless*
the script actualy asks for bash and doesn't just pretend that it lives in
a world where everybody has /bin/sh or /usr/bin/sh being bash. The same
applies if you do s/bash/ksh/ or similar.

As the open group afaik has the unix9x specs (that are superset of posix
with descriptions of what is extendedd) online, its fairly easy to check
what is required/can be expected of shells 8-)

> 
> Havoc
> 

	Sander

	I see a dark sail on the horizon
	Set under a dark cloud that hides the sun
	Bring me my Broadsword and clear understanding