treach [2007-08-22 17:39]:
Another, more debatable point is the use of a more standard adherent shell as the default, with the removal of bashisms from the rc scripts as an addon.
I've used dash quite successfully in the past for this, which is also used by debian/*buntu. It's a lot faster and smaller than bash, however, if used as /bin/sh it will trigger misbehaviour from broken software that assumes /bin/sh == /bin/bash. So far I've only heard of cdega having this issue though - I've come across nothing that complained so far myself (fwiw).
+1, I like the idea of removing bashisms from the RC scripts. Any objections? :p However, I'm not sure whether it's a good idea to start doing a /bin/sh switch now, ie shortly before release preparations begin. However, we could: * make the scripts sh compatible now * switch /bin/sh over to eg dash (tbh I'm not sure what other alternative smallish shells exist) early *after* the next release and get people to test it. I'm afraid that there might be other applications that expect bash in /bin/sh. How does this sound? Regards, Tilman -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?