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From:	"Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull AT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
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Subject:	Re: Bash bugs (was: djgpp/libreadline bug)
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Date:	Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:21:02 +0900
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Rugxulo writes:

 > I still say that DASH (Debian Ash) is much easier to build, even
 > though it currently doesn't work. It should, in theory, be much easier
 > to get that working than trying to keep up with Bash (which is
 > humongous). DASH claims to be POSIX compliant, so it should work with
 > Autoconf.

The problem is that configure.in will contain shell snippets,
sometimes quite extensive.  Bash-isms often creep in.  bash is the
standard POSIX shell in most places (IIRC some BSDs still give users
csh by default, but bash is invariably installed somewhere), so few
users actually get bit unless they deliberately set /bin/sh to the
POSIX, the whole POSIX, and nothing but the POSIX shell.  OTOH, Debian
tries to be pretty strict about it, so maybe most GNU configure
scripts are bash-free by now.

It's worth a try, I guess, but be aware that it's not necessarily
going to be that easy; it might be better to concentrate these
headaches in one place (== maintaining bash, not de-bash-ifying
everybody's configure scripts).

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