[arch-general] New install media 2012.08.04 uses ZSH, if I may ask, why?

[Jeremiah Dodds]

Nicolas Sebrecht <nsebrecht at piing.fr> writes:

> The 07/08/12, Tom Gundersen wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 1:21 AM, David Benfell <benfell at parts-unknown.org> wrote:
>
>> > But that latter is an issue. It may break an (I assume) unknown number
>> > of existing scripts if used for sh, so I think the likely conclusion
>> > would be that *both* bash (for sh compatibility) and zsh would have to
>> > be installed. I'm not opposed to this, but I'll certainly concede that
>> > there are valid points to be made in opposition.
>
> zsh emulates sh when invoked with that name (and so goes for ksh).
>
>> We need /bin/bash and also /bin/sh to be provided by bash,
>
> For /bin/bash I understand but for /bin/sh I don't think so.
>
> Why /bin/bash is required? Is it because scripts have this shebang or
> the way they are written?

Well, all the canon arch scripts use #!/bin/bash, afaik[1] . Other than
that, while I use zsh regularly and love it, a move to having it as the
default shell would definitely require a lot of testing, if only because
bash has become so ubiquitous that I'd worry about breakage due to
non-POSIX "bashisms" being possibly relied on by a lot of scripts.


Footnotes: 
[1]  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:Bash_Coding_Style

-- 
Jeremiah Dodds

github     : https://github.com/jdodds
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