Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: sh versionator.eclass

[Alec Warner]

On 10/2/07, Roy Marples <uberlord@g.o> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-10-02 at 06:49 -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > BSD is a second class citizen to GNU here.  Gentoo started out as a project
> > targetting a GNU userland under Linux and will continue for quite sometime
> > (forever?) as the majority/core focus.  forcing the project to limit itself
> > when there is no gain (yet plenty of pain) for the majority of users is a no
> > brainer: no.

>
> Well, let me be the first to stand for equal rights then!

So there is a difference I think between 'making stuff work on BSD'
and 'changing the fundamental requirements of the distribution'.

>
> Anyway, this was about changing the portage tree syntax from bash to
> posix shell, not gnu vs bsd vs userland tools. The arguments are not the
> same as bash supports posix shell whereas gnu tools don't support bsd
> extensions and bsd tools don't support gnu extensions.
>
> I say that for the most part, there should be no technical reason why
> ebuilds cannot be in posix shell whilst being readable and maintainable.
>

There is no technical reason.  But if you think for two seconds this
is only a technical problem then I think you have not examined it
properly.  Most of the developers here are running GNU/linux with GNU
tools (as has been pointed out).  These are the tools that are used
and there is no gain *for them* to write in what I can only gather as
an inferior but portable sh syntax.  They would be writing for sh only
to satisfy you, and you have IMHO done a poor job of motivating them.
You can put bash in baselayout in BSD in like 2 seconds and prevent
all this hard work you are asking of other developers.

Personally, I like your idea in general until I have to start writing
ebuilds in sh, and init scripts in sh, and pretty much anything in sh;
as vapier points out, sh sucks donkey balls.  So I *will* use bash,
because the fix is 'gentoo requires bash', it's always required bash,
and you haven't convinced me that it should change.  Unless there is
some crazy ass reason why you can't install bash on a given platform,
I don't think there is a technical reason to avoid using bash.

> If portage or another package manager wishes to uses bash to parse
> ebuilds and eclasses, more power to them! I won't stop that. I just want
> the ability for other shells to do the same. It isn't hard, and you
> don't need to be a rocket scientist. It's not an overnight change, but a
> gradual change.
>
> Thanks
>
> Roy
>
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