Re: [9fans] rc vs sh

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> sorcery is a nice package manager; the only one i've ever actually
> liked, but yeah, it's a monster. a short time after i stopped using it
> i was interested to see someone report he'd actually reduced the size
> of his shell script by converting it from bash to ordinary sh; using
> the proper tools instead of bashisms had shortened it. i wondered what
> would happen to sorcery if so converted, but it was just idle
> speculation.

i have never seen a very large shell script that i found readable.
of course the waters have been polluted by gnu configure scripts,
but i still think the idea is invalid.  just as one makes every attempt
to keep a c function from exceeding a page or so, it follows that one
should keep the individual units in shell scripts small.  the individual
unit of scripting is imho ... a script, not a function.  this is because it
is too hard to do much isolation within a script.  even with functions.
patch/* is a good example of a structured set of scripts.

- erik