On 2008-05-06 at 17:55 +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> What, if I may ask, is the purpose of zsh/files?

If I correctly recall the gist of a verbal conversation about 11 years
ago with the author, in a university environment with heavily multi-user
systems which were often abused by people writing My First Fork Bomb, it
was to have the availability to load in sufficient builtins to make it
easier to deal with systems which won't let you fork() anymore more; to
do basic recovery work and have the commands available; to avoid fork()
overheads when dealing with a loaded single-CPU Solaris box, etc.

But mostly, IIRC, to build a static version of the shell with the module
already loaded, to put on a boot/recovery diskette and so reduce what
was needed.

It pre-dates busybox, which has since become the common way of doing
this.

It wasn't intended to provide full versions of the commands, the
commands which are there don't implement all the POSIX options, etc.
It's intended to provide enough to be useful in emergencies.

Most people shouldn't need to use it.

Mind, it's availability was one of the factors which led to the author
successfully convincing me to switch shells to zsh.  :^)  There were
times when it _really_ mattered.

It's probably worth adding a note to the documentation that the
implementations are not complete (for Standards compliance) and that the
module should probably only be loaded for emergency recovery situations;
loading it for routine use is premature over-optimisation.

-Phil