Subject: Re: Question about ash and getopts
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 13:32:28 -0800

Peter Seebach wrote:

> But, most importantly, it's in POSIX.  I can see no reason for /bin/sh to not
> be at least reasonably close to a POSIX shell, when the code is already
> written.

I was looking at the POSIX specs, and while getopts is listed as a
required utility[1], and it is listed in the table "regular built-in
utilities"[2] it is not in the table "special built-in utilities."[3] 
So, it looks like the command must be present but it does not
necessarily have to be built into the shell.

The earliest discussion of this seems to be[4] a thread from October
2000, where Chris F states the following:

> The "ash maintainer" is either me or Corinna.  FWIW, I don't plan on
> changing this.  I want ash to be small and fast when running configure
> scripts.  I've stripped ash down to support only the minimal set of
> functionality found in older versions of UNIX.  I use the /bin/sh on
> Digital UNIX 3.2 as a reference.
> 
> If you want more functionality, use bash.
> 
> FYI, getopts can also be a separate program although we don't supply it
> with cygwin, currently.

So, it looks like cgf is the one you need to convince.  Perhaps show the
running time differences of a long configure script with and without a
getopts-enabled ash.  I have no idea what the differences may be, if
any.

Brian

[1]
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/getopts.html#tag_04_62
[2]
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/xcu_chap01.html#tagtcjh_5
[3]
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/xcu_chap02.html#tag_02_14
[4] http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2000-10/threads.html#00337

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