On Fri, 2014-10-03 at 00:04 +0000, brian m. carlson wrote: > The shell you're describing is posh. It implements exactly those > features, and nothing more.
You've got me to look at posh. Thanks for that.
So we do have a shell that developers can use to test their scripts
match Debian policy.
> Unfortunately, some developers have outright refused to make their
> software using /bin/sh work with posh, even when provided with a patch
> (e.g. #309415), to the point that last time I tried to use posh
> as /bin/sh, the system wouldn't boot.
If I understand what you are saying correctly this means policy 10.4 is
mostly ignored. Worse, if you try to configure a system that conforms
closely to that policy it doesn't boot. This is the sort of thing that
that makes open source programmers look like rank amateurs.
If we want Debian policy to reflect reality and make it easy for
developers to test their scripts conform to policy, then it should say
"#!/bin/sh" scripts must work with dash.
As an aside, I'm not sure why the preference for posh over dash, given:
$ size $(which posh)
text data bss dec hex filename
123260 4868 2920 131048 1ffe8 /bin/posh
$ size $(which dash)
text data bss dec hex filename
108376 5192 11240 124808 1e788 /bin/dash
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