Re: bootstrap shell?

[Tobias Nygren <tnn%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Fri, 23 May 2008 20:56:38 +0200
Adam Hoka <adam.hoka%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:

> On Fri, 23 May 2008 15:03:44 +0200
> Tobias Nygren <tnn%NetBSD.org@localhost> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 23 May 2008 14:58:45 +0200
> > Tobias Nygren <tnn%NetBSD.org@localhost> wrote:
> > 
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > pkgsrc/OSF1 has long been plagued by the buggy and crash prone /bin/sh
> > > _and_ /bin/ksh. I would like to fix this once and for all by adding
> > > support for providing a sane shell as part of the bootstrap process.
> > > This would involve importing the source code of some shell to pkgsrc,
> > > like was already done for awk and sed. The #1 candidate seems to be
> > > shells/pdksh. This would add 1.8M to unpacked pkgsrc. Can we live with
> > > this?
> > > 
> > > TIA,
> > > -Tobias
> > 
> > I should have mentioned that mksh is another alternative, though I
> > haven't investigated it yet.
> 
> mksh would be a better choice, because its a bugfixed version of pdksh and 
> compiles on a lot of unix platforms, even on older BSD/OS and other exotic 
> systems (and without autoconf).
> The author is also very responsive, which is a great plus.
> 
> (ps.: personally I would be happy with mksh instead of ancient pdksh in base)
> 
> -- 
> Adam

Hi,

I did give mksh a spin. It didn't fly with pkgsrc because it's
handling of the "echo" shell builtin is broken. At least it deviates
from BSD and SUSv3 sh(1). Try echo '\x40' under mksh.
We could probably hack it but I opted for pdksh for now because it's
more familiar and definitely time proven even though there are some
well known bugs lurking within it.

Kind regards,
-Tobias