On 07-05-2007 09:59:02 +0200, Michael Haubenwallner wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-05-04 at 22:13 +0200, Fabian Groffen wrote:
> > On 19-04-2007 17:30:27 +0200, Michael Haubenwallner wrote:
> <snip>
> > > 
> > > Maybe setting CONFIG_SHELL=${EPREFIX}/bin/bash could work too ?
> > 
> > Ahhh... anyone have objections on setting this in the profiles?  It
> > would just make any configure package use bash from the prefix, instead
> > of /bin/sh, which feels somehow a bit safer, even though it should work
> > fine in theory.
> 
> For AIX, most users really want prefix-bash for performance reasons.
> 
> For others like Solaris, the question is:
> Are we willing to test/debug/fix/upstream-report such bugs ?

You have to stop support crappy stuff at some moment.  If it's old
enough, no more energy should be put into working with such things, IMO.

> If we are, then we should keep using /bin/sh.
> If not, then we want to use prefix-bash.
> 
> One thing to keep in mind: Who else if not prefix-portage has that power
> to test/debug/fix such upstream bugs on that range of platforms ?

Many, many, many others.  But they usually tend to just workaround the
problem in a way that "works for them" to get the desired binary.

> Using prefix-bash can always be the quick workaround for such bugs, if
> one does not have time to debug immediately - let the user choose!
> 
> So maybe we want some FEATURE, or simply introduce users on how to set
> CONFIG_SHELL in etc/profile.bashrc, to switch between /bin/sh and
> prefix-bash (defaulting to prefix-bash for aix, to /bin/sh for others) ?

While prefix bash may be faster/better on AIX, on darwin and sunos
/bin/sh is much faster (it's nearly 6 times smaller).  Point here is
that I think you should either do it, or not do it.  If AIX is
inherently broken, then on AIX we use prefix bash.  If on Solaris we use
/bin/sh, we should avoid working around it (such as in gcc ebuild) to
keep it clean.  Either it sucks, or it does not.

BTW, on most Linuxes today there is no /bin/sh, but only bash, so
actually on Linux we better use prefix-bash, simply because we have that
one under control, and using /bin/sh is just using a bash that we don't
know.

-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo on a different level
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