This change was introduced over two years ago, though it didn't
make it out into the world until 1.3, due to the long release delay
between 1.2 and 1.3.

It appears that Charles Hannum suggested doing this; I've cc'd this
message to him to see if he has any comments on whether we should
maintain this or revert back to more portable code.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   604 801 5335   De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.
The most widely ported operating system in the world: http://www.netbsd.org

On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, Robert Evans wrote:

> Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1999 21:54:24 +0000
> From: Robert Evans <r.evans@ic.ac.uk>
> To: port-sparc@netbsd.org
> Subject: MAKEDEV is not portable
> 
> Hi,
> 
> MAKEDEV under NetBSD/SPARC appears to have been changed in the same
> manner as MAKEDEV under NetBSD/sun3 to use features that are not
> standard in other Bourne shells.
> 
> This is documented in PR port-sun3/4105, but what it boils down to is
> that MAKEDEV cannot be run on a SunOS 4 or 5 server to create a
> diskless environment to install another NetBSD/SPARC machine from (despite
> what it says in the INSTALL file for NetBSD-1.3.3).
> 
> The two items that cause problems are the mathematical assignments such
> as:
> 	n=$(($n + 1))
> and the substitutions used to retrieve the unit number:
> 	unit=${i#sd}
> 
> Is it possible to back out these changes?  Efficiency is not a great
> concern for something like MAKEDEV...  :-)
> 
> If I patch up a copy of MAKEDEV, would the changes get folded back if I
> submitted them?
> 
> (A closer look suggests that the MAKEDEV for other ports also uses the
> same constructions.)
> 
> Cheers,
> Robert
>