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Re: Password file with over 3000 users.

From: Craig Sanders <cas(at)taz.net.au>
Date: Sat Sep 29 2007 - 22:02:53 EDT

On Sat, Sep 29, 2007 at 10:27:41AM -0400, Chris Bannister wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 08:05:33PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 05:44:40AM -0400, Roberto C. S?nchez wrote:
> > > On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 05:39:29PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > > >
> > > > in short, don't do unneccessary harm and don't violate the principle
> > > > of least surprise.
> > >
> > > This is *exactly* one of the things that they are trying to fix.
> >
> > no, it's not. if it was, then they wouldn't be making the proposal.
>
> Isn't this all about posix compliance.

no, it's about "outing"[1] package scripts that have #!/bin/sh but use bashisms.

bash itself IS posix-compliant, in that it can run posix-compliant scripts. being a superset of posix sh does NOT make it non-compliant.

packaged scripts that use bashisms but wrongly declare themselves to be posix compliant (i.e. with #!/bin/sh) are non-compliant. not bash.

[1] i.e. deliberately causing breakage in order to encourage users to file bug reports.

the fact that this act of vandalism will ALSO break users' locally written scripts, not just packaged scripts, is ignored - or, at best, hand-waved away - by the zealots who are proposing it. their view of the Way Things Should Be trumps all other considerations.

in short: the bugs are in packaged scripts with incorrect shebang lines. the correct fix is to file bug reports on those packages and get them fixed, not to arbitrarily break lots of other unrelated things.

there aren't many of these bugs remaining - the proponents of this idea would be doing far more useful work if they concentrated on getting those fixed than on breaking stuff by forcing their preference for ash/dash on everyone else.

Do you need help?

craig

-- 
craig sanders 


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Received on Sat Sep 29 22:03:23 2007

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