Re: mksh import

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 10:17:42AM +0100, Adam Hamsik wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I think that it would be good to have at least one modern shell in
> our base, because I use ksh and it's de facto standard I have decided
> to make a patch which adds mksh[1] to our base [2]. Code is BSD
> licensed, well written and maintained which can't be said about our own
> ksh(There are 15 PRs opened for it).

This would be fine with me if the other ksh in our tree were removed.
When our ksh was imported, it was *supposed* to replace our /bin/sh.
But as it turned out, it was so buggy it couldn't (it was much further
from POSIX compliance than our /bin/sh).

Do you think it would be possible to use mksh to carry out our original
long ago plan of simply replacing the current /bin/sh, and enhance
functionality while trimming down the system at the same time?

Another question is performance.  Some shells are much much faster than
others for tasks like system builds.  For example, zsh can actually
speed up the build considerably if used to replace our /bin/sh, while
our in-tree "ksh" is about the same or a little slower.  How does mksh
compare?

Can enough ksh functionality be turned off in mksh to leave a comfortable
environment for those used to a fairly minimal shell like our current
/bin/sh?  Can it be made entirely compatible with script (I'm mostly
thinking .profile) syntax for our existing shell?

Thor