Re: Implement dash as bootstrap shell

[Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>]

* On 2015-12-05 at 22:31 GMT, Greg Troxel wrote:

> Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost> writes:
> 
> > Under what circumstance do you see us needing to use other shells for
> > bootstrap?  dash is the fastest shell I've tested, and supports all
> > the features we require for a bootstrap shell.  I also like that, due
> > to only supporting POSIX features, it keeps us honest and ensures we
> > don't start using shell-specific constructs in our infrastructure.
> 
> That's a good argument.  I was unclear on whether there would be
> choices, and whether there were some platforms that needed particular
> other shells, since presumably we're talking about platforms whose
> /bin/sh is too junky to start with, so they are in general troubled.
> 
> > Remember that any shell that you want to support in bootstrap needs to
> > be extracted under files/, increasing the size of pkgsrc for each.
> 
> So it sounds like you are suggesting:
> 
>   commit the ability to use dash now

Yes.

>   (some point later, after the freeze???)  remove pdksh as a bootstrap
>   shell option

Yes, once the platforms which currently enable it by default are
tested ok with dash and there is no longer any need for pdksh.

>   resulting in the --enable-dash option going away,
>   because it will just be used on platforms where pkgsrc knows that
>   /bin/sh is not ok?

No, I'll leave --with-dash.  For example, on OSX the default bootstrap
shell will be /bin/bash, but users may want to use --with-dash to get
a much faster shell.  I'll certainly be doing this for my bulk builds.

It's also useful on Debian/Ubuntu where their dash (/bin/sh) doesn't
have the octal patch we include so cannot be used for bootstrap.

Thanks,

-- 
Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com