Re: ash/bash postinstall dance [Was: Cygwin doesn't install on Windows Server 2008 (x64).]

[Brian Dessent <brian at dessent dot net>]

Eric Blake wrote:

> Except that the bash postinstall tries to do one other thing - it caters
> to users who prefer ksh, zsh, or the relatively recent posh as their
> /bin/sh.  While it is not the default installation, I also don't want to
> forbid it.  In other words, bash tries to upgrade /bin/sh only if it can
> identify it as ash or bash, and not if it is some other shell.

I thought about that possibility, but:

1. Has this capability ever been formally advertised as supported?
2. How many people out there actually have a non-bash /bin/sh?
3. How many script compatibility issues do they run into when doing this
(aka "how much of a masochist must one be to try this")?

The tradeoff that I have in mind here is saving X number of people the
extra startup overhead of bash having to read and parse a profile.d
script that checks if bash.exe is newer than sh.exe, versus breaking the
ability of Y number of people to have non-bash /bin/sh.  And I contend
that X >> Y by a huge factor.

Brian

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