Re: Update for Debian shells/rc-1.4-2

Re: Update for Debian shells/rc-1.4-2

[Byron Rakitzis]

Hi. I should mention that I am working less now with computers than I
have been in a while. I'm enrolled full time in the Utrechts
Conservatorium in the Netherlands, and I'm studying baroque flute and
bassoon.

That being said, I don't want to see rc unravel because of lack of
maintenance, and I would like to try to put together the fixes from the
last while and officially release it, so it gets picked up by the GNU
distrib and so on.

Given that I am stuck on my own with nothing but BSD on my pc, I will
have to ask for some volunteers to run trip tests. I'll mention it
again on the list once I get my act together so I can incorporate
these patches.

Byron.

Re: Update for Debian shells/rc-1.4-2

[David Luyer]

One thing wrong with the current Debian rc-1.4 package is that it dies on
a ^C - almost totally useless.  This is because the wrong include file was
used for mksignal in the build (should be /usr/include/asm/signal.h).  As
a result it installs no handler for SIGINT it seems.

Personally I always prefer a more verbose sigmsgs.c, viz:

Sigmsgs signals[] = {
        {"",            ""},
        {"sighup",      "hangup detected"},
        {"sigint",      "interrupt from keyboard"},
        {"sigquit",     "quit from keyboard"},
        {"sigill",      "illegal instruction"},
        {"sigtrap",     "trace/breakpoint trap"},
        {"sigabrt",     "abort"},
        {"sigbus",      "bus error"},
        {"sigfpe",      "floating point exception"},
        {"sigkill",     "killed"},
        {"sigusr1",     "user signal 1"},
        {"sigsegv",     "segmentation violation"},
        {"sigusr2",     "user signal 2"},
        {"sigpipe",     "pipe fault"},
        {"sigalrm",     "alarm"},
        {"sigterm",     "terminated"},
        {"sigstkflt",   "stack fault on coprocessor"},
        {"sigchld",     "child stop or exit"},
        {"sigcont",     "continue"},
        {"sigstop",     "stopped"},
        {"sigtstp",     "stop signal from tty"},
        {"sigttin",     "background tty read"},
        {"sigttou",     "background tty write"},
        {"sigurg",      "urgent condition on i/o channel"},
        {"sigxcpu",     "cpu time limit exceeded"},
        {"sigxfsz",     "file size limit exceeded"},
        {"sigvtalrm",   "vitual time alarm"},
        {"sigprof",     "profile signal"},
        {"sigwinch",    "window resize"},
        {"sigio",       "i/o error"},
        {"sigpwr",      "power fault"},
        {"sigunused",   "unused signal"},
};

David.

Re: Update for Debian shells/rc-1.4-2

[Soren Dayton]

David Luyer <luyer@ucs.uwa.edu.au> writes:

> One thing wrong with the current Debian rc-1.4 package is that it dies on
> a ^C - almost totally useless.  This is because the wrong include file was
> used for mksignal in the build (should be /usr/include/asm/signal.h).  As
> a result it installs no handler for SIGINT it seems.

I have `autoconf'ed es.  Would the rc people be interested in this.  I
suspect that it would work for rc pretty much out of the box.

Soren

Conceptual Integrity (Re: Update for Debian shells/rc-1.4-2)

[Richard Brooksby]

Byron Rakitzis wrote:

> That being said, I don't want to see rc unravel because of lack of
> maintenance, and I would like to try to put together the fixes from the
> last while and officially release it, so it gets picked up by the GNU
> distrib and so on.

  I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to
  product quality.  Having a system architect is the most important single
  step toward conceptual integrity...  After teaching a software
  engineering laboratory more than 20 times, I came to insist that student
  teams as small as four people choose a manager, and a separate
  architect.
    -- Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month (20th Anniversary Edition), 1995

Imo, someone needs to be in charge of rc, so that it doesn't get randomly
hacked on by all and sundry.  Letting it fly free with the other GNU tools
is almost a guarantee of loss of conceptual integrity.  As a long time user
of rc I appreciate its quality, and would like to see quality maintained.

Just voicing my concern.

---
Richard Brooksby <richard@harlequin.co.uk>
Leader, Manager, and Developer / Memory Management / Harlequin
Tel. Int. +44 1954 785451 (voice)  +44 1954 785444 (fax)

Re: Update for Debian shells/rc-1.4-2

[Peter Koch]

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> Given that I am stuck on my own with nothing but BSD on my pc, I will
> have to ask for some volunteers to run trip tests. I'll mention it
> again on the list once I get my act together so I can incorporate
> these patches.

"rc" is used here as default shell for our students - mainly on Solaris,
but also on SGI Irix and Digital Unix. Most of them (actually > 400 ) never
change to "*sh", so "rc" "proves" to be sufficient. Well, our yppasswd
won't allow you to alter your login shell if the name starts with "r", but
that's another story.

Version 1.5beta was ported to Solaris (2.4) long ago, fixing some ugly
problems with signal handling. We also started POSIXifying the code,
but there is still some more work to do. We are not that interested in
any new features, but we'd like to share our modifications with the community
and see a finalized version of "rc" which compiles quietly and runs
on (at least) standard UNIX systems.

- -Peter

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Re: Update for Debian shells/rc-1.4-2

[Scott Schwartz]

Peter Koch <pk@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE> writes:
| Version 1.5beta was ported to Solaris (2.4) long ago, fixing some ugly
| problems with signal handling. 

Aside from the SIGCLD thing and the SIGINT thing, what problems?

| We also started POSIXifying the code,

Posix systems still run traditional code, but not the other way
around.  To avoid bunches of ifdefs, that argues for staying
with the traditional code as much as possible.

Re: Conceptual Integrity (Re: Update for Debian shells/rc-1.4-2)

[Byron Rakitzis]

Thanks for the nice citation.

I didn't mean anything sinister by letting rc fly free with other GNU
tools -- as far as I know, rc is *already* included on the GNU tapes
and I just wanted to point out that it was time for a new version of rc
to propagate through the free software distribution channels.

I would love for someone to maintain rc, but given that no one has
stepped up to the task in the last 3-4 years it's time for me to turn
the crank once more. However, I absolutely cannot promise to continue
to maintain rc even at this extremely low level of activity.

Byron.