[ANNOUNCEMENT] Updated: dash-0.5.9.1-1

[Lee Dilkie]

On 2/24/2017 9:43 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 02/23/2017 10:57 PM, Steven Penny wrote:
>>> Or more likely, many people likely have pre-existing scripts wrongly
>>> written as #!/bin/sh but which use bash-ism rather than portable
>>> POSIX-specified shell
>>
>> However, I think it is worth the trouble.
>
> If you'd like, I can post experimental versions of both bash and dash,
> which MUST be upgraded (or downgraded) in lockstep, where I move /bin/sh
> over to the dash package (do it wrong, and you could be left with no
> /bin/sh at all, which is not a good idea - although maybe I can use some
> postinstall scripts so that at least the upgrade side tries to play nice
> even when someone only does a partial upgrade).  If people will then
> test with those experimental versions installed, and report breakage, we
> could get a feel for how many scripts installed by default are broken.
>
> But we are severely limited in volunteer manpower compared to Debian,
> and I suspect that 1) there won't be enough testers (we won't know the
> real impact until it is no longer experimental, but that is too late),
> and 2) even if testers are diligent, we will be unable to patch all the
> fallout in any sort of timely manner.
>
> Are you really prepared to force the Cygwin community through that much
> growing pain?
>
> I agree that /bin/sh as dash is much faster at executing configure
> scripts. But configure scripts aren't the only scripts in the wild. We
> do have checkbashisms ported to Cygwin, and that can help, but it is not
> a panacea.
>

If dash doesn't support all the features of bash (which is incorrectly assumed
in some cases for sh), aren't you just asking for trouble by breaking things?

-lee

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