[Nix-dev] Dealing with non-Bash /bin/sh on non-NixOS

Lluís Batlle i Rossell viric at viric.name
Fri Nov 9 19:02:54 CET 2012


On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 06:57:24PM +0100, Peter Simons wrote:
> Hi Eelco,
> 
>  >> we should link /bin/sh to Dash instead of Bash. That would catch any
>  >> implicit dependencies on non-POSIX shell features,
>  >
>  > What's the point of that? Breaking zillions of existing scripts for
>  > very little gain doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
> 
> now I am confused. In the very posting I was responding to, you said:
> 
>  | Yes, fix builders not to rely on /bin/sh (or at least not to assume
>  | it's Bash).
> 
> Apparently, we consider builders broken that assume /bin/sh to be Bash.
> So why don't you see the benefit of using a non-Bash shell for /bin/sh
> to expose those broken builders?
> 
> Besides, everyone who is running Nix on a host system other than NixOS
> potentially *has* a non-Bash /bin/sh. (Which is why this thread was
> started.) So it doesn't feel right to say that changing /bin/sh to a
> non-Bash shell would "break scripts". That change would just expose
> scripts that are broken already.

I understood from niksnut that this change could be done in a branch, without
any merge to master until all (most?) works.

Regards,
Lluís.


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