Re: [9fans] rc vs sh

[Lucio De Re <lucio@proxima.alt.za>]

> On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 04:52:34PM +0200, Lucio De Re wrote:
>>
>> Or are you oriented towards kiloLOCs of test code to see which
>> features are implemented and provide compatability a la autoconf?
>>
>
> Excellent example of a false dilemma.  I'm oriented towards exerting the
> effort to make something that isn't shitty.  I'm at peace with the go
> developers decision to avoid that effort.  Are you?
>
Sure, feel free to make something that isn't shitty, there's plenty
out there that can be improved.  The machinery to install Go (from
sources) is hardly the most important amongst them.

And, yes, I am: I use Plan 9 as my development platform, /bin/ksh
(pdksh, I presume) as my Unix shell on NetBSD.  On Ubuntu I could not
give it a passing thought, my environment gets recycled way too often
to bother.

What the Go Team choose to use as the underlying shell isn't
important, unless it impacts their delivery of the Go code.  Arguing
that there are in fact portable /bin/sh scripts that can be written
does not actually write such scripts.  No one stops anyone from taking
the purportedly "bash" scripts, converting them to tidy, clean /bin/sh
scripts and submitting them to the Go Team for inclusion.  The Go
Team's reaction will still be: "How do you know that these scripts
will work under all possible instances of /bin/sh?"  Solution: replace
the #!/bin/sh with #!/usr/bin/env -c /bin/bash.  Why not?

> Anyway, bash uses autoconf as well.  So all you've done is push the mess
> one step farther away from your code.  Why not just cut the cord?  I'm
> hearing "shell scripting is easy" and I'm hearing "acceptance testing is
> too hard."  Which is it?  I can write portable shell scripts, but the
> idiots on golang-nuts have explicitly said they don't WANT portable
> shell scripts.  They want to rely on bash, and all the GNU bullshit that
> brings with it.

Bash using Autoconf is a straw man, there are almost certainly binary
releases of Bash out there for all Unix-y platforms on which the Go
development system is likely to work or be portable to.  I may
misremember, but before the Go tool was released, the Plan 9 release
managed to get itself compiled using ape/sh.  As far as I can tell,
the dependence isn't in Bash features as much as in the consistency
across Bash versions.

++L