Re: mksh import

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

On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 08:41:49PM -0600, Dad - Kent - wrote:
>
> If I understand correctly, I believe someone has suggested that we
> replace the
> existing /bin/sh in the base with a more fully featured shell such
> as ksh93 / mksh.

Please, sanely wrap your lines at 80 columns when posting to the NetBSD
lists!

I believe the only person who actually suggested the above was me.  It
was not the original suggestion in this thread, which was to replace
the existing /bin/ksh in base with mksh.

> I would second and support such a move. Unless someone can show that
> ksh93 / mksh would adversely affect the performance of the system in
> a significant
> way then I can think of no reason why this should not be done.

It's hardly the case that the ksh93 licensing is friendly.  Also, it
has already been demonstrated in this thread that our existing /bin/sh
is considerably faster for most scripting purposes (including the crucial
purpose of building the system) than any of the alternatives currently
proposed.

Unless that's likely to change, I would no longer support my suggestion
of replacing both /bin/sh and /bin/ksh with mksh.  However, I still think
it would make an excellent replacement for the buggy old "ksh" in our
system, that is, for /bin/ksh.

Our existing /bin/sh has the full set of POSIX shell features and thus
what you can't do with it, you can't do in a portable shell script anyhow.

Thor