Re: mksh import

[tlaronde%polynum.com@localhost]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 08:43:16AM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> 
> 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).
> 

I'm not a NetBSD developer but an user, so this is for what is worth,
but could someone explain me why something more than a strictly
compliant POSIX shell should be in base?

Even a Bourne shell, POSIX compliant but with sugar not only for
interactive use, is IMHO a bad system shell since it will not give
a "POSIX.2 validator" for scripts supposed to run on different Unix
flavors. I hate seing that a pkgsrc package forces the installation
of bash, perl and so on simply because the programmers or
developers don't know that 99.99% of their needs for this kind of
pkg stuff are covered by POSIX utilities, and that the remaining is
probably, is this very case, dispensable.

With pkgsrc, I fail to see the difficulty to install another shell
matching one needs; and I had already several times the need to
allocate a bigger partition for /usr/src (not to speak about an
/usr/obj to be able to compile...) when upgrading because software too 
is becoming obese. So killing ksh in base without providing a
replacement could perhaps be an option too?

Cheers,
-- 
        Thierry Laronde <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                      http://www.kergis.com/
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