[indiana-discuss] [docs-discuss] review request: user FAQ

[Shawn Walker]

On 15/09/2007, Roger Marquis <marquis at roble.com> wrote:
> Brandorr wrote:
> > ===Q: Why isn't bash the default system shell?===
> > A: There is a consensus building to use a modern/user-friendly default
> > system shell, such as bash or ksh93, but the integration and
> > compatibility changes required have yet to be done.
>
> A consensus for ksh? Among what audience? Couldn't be the vast majority of
> potential OpenSolaris users, currently about running bash (90%) and tcsh
> (9%), in Linux and *BSD respectively.

A consensus among our community, not some other community, at least
from what I've seen. Bash is already there if people want to use it.

> The only real problem with ksh is that scripts written to it won't run on
> most other platforms.  Is there any *bsd or Linux that includes a ksh
> by default?

Yes, actually. RedHat Enterprise Linux comes with a version of ksh,
which version I'm not sure. Almost every GNU/Linux distribution I've
ever used has offered ksh as an option. I know because a lot of people
where I work prefer using ksh.

> IMO, Sun's current market share (in the low single digits) is due to a
> persistent disregard for cross-platform compatibility.  Religious arguments
> aside, making ksh the default anything will only have a negative impact on
> compatibility, and market share.

Not any more than it does now. The people that created this problem
are the idiots that put #!/bin/sh at the top of their script and
assume that means bash, when it obviously isn't.

That's one of the reasons everyone at the company I work at is
required to specifically indicate which shell they're using via
#!/bin/ksh #!/bin/sh #!/bin/bash, etc. Since the scripts may be run on
other systems...

While I'm all for being compatible, I don't think idiotic behaviour
should be encouraged.

-- 
Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst
binarycrusader at gmail.com - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. " --Donald Knuth