Re: Bash vs. sh

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:

> According to Jim Meyering on 4/22/2008 3:42 AM:
> | I'll probably change the instructions in README-hacking to mention
> | that you may have to run "bash ./bootstrap" rather than
> |
> |     $ ./bootstrap
> |
> | if your system's /bin/sh is substandard.
>
> Sounds reasonable, since there are already a number of other hacking
> instructions to follow.
>
> | Plus, maybe be a test to detect the broken shell and to warn you
> | that you need to invoke the script differently.
>
> Absolutely; autoconf does a good job at this (and you can use the
> resulting configure or config.status to get a good idea of what the code
> should look like).
>
> | An alternative is to encumber bootstrap with shell-selection
> | code and make it re-exec itself using a sufficiently functional shell.
> | But that too may fail, so I don't see the point.
>
> Is it worth writing bootstrap.m4sh, and running it through autom4te to get
> the shell selection code from autoconf with minimal effort on your part?
> You'd still probably want to check in the generated bootstrap script, though.

That's tempting -- and maybe better in a way -- but not enough
to outweigh the penalty of checking in the generated code.