astksh review

Karsten Fleischer K.Fleischer@omnium.de
Wed May 21 23:45:00 GMT 2003


> Why don't you release ksh93 compiled exactly the same way as
> it can be found on the ksh release page for other O/S? So if
> one has to use several systems one can be sure to find exactly
> the same flavour of ksh93?

Did you have a look at the ast-ksh packages for the other systems?

The binary packages also contain several shared libs, development header
files, manpages for ast functions etc.
All this stuff is not allowed under the cygwin binary package paradigm.
As I said before, I have to bow to both AT&T and cygwin packaging
schemes.
What I'm offering is the fully featured ksh93 with many builtins for
optional use in one simple package. Period.

If cygwin would adopt fhs, I'd most propably change the packaging
scheme.

> > pdksh is a ksh88 clone but differs here and there.
> > You can't drop pdksh at once.
> > A transition phase is necessary.
> 
> Right. The 'here and there' is actually more than that.
> Why not keep all shells that one wants to have, just call them
> their names: ksh, pdksh, sh, zsh, bash, whatever.
> I never understood why some O/S have links in such a way that
> you never really know which shell you are using unless you
> really try to find out. I mean /bin/sh can be linked to any
> other shell by default. Bad practice IMHO, but exists on
> all most all O/S flavours I know.
> 
> I'd like to be sure that when I have *!/bin/ksh in my script,
> I do get the real ksh and something else.
> 
> Maybe just my dream, though....

The real thing were if you can select your favorite shell by just
setting the SHELL variable and have no shebang line at all in your
scripts.

Also, you should probably use

#!/bin/env ksh

for the shebang line, in case that ksh is somewhere else your PATH.
Hope that env is always in /bin :)

Karsten



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