Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Why use /bin/sh in kernel build system? | Date | Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:27:02 -0500 | From | Mark Rustad <> |
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On Apr 29, 2008, at 11:45 AM, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
>> I read in the latest Linux Journal magazine that someone noticed >> that even >> though the kernel scripts say #!/bin/sh, many of them are really >> bash scripts. >> This person went through the effort of changing the script to be >> true 'sh' >> scripts. Has that code been merged in? > > I have no patches pending but I may have lost them. > As I am 100% ignorant about what is bash and what is not bash > specialities > I will more or less be blind when I apply them so I hope they are well > tested.
So why use /bin/sh ever in the kernel build system? I consciously began using /bin/bash consistently in scripts years ago because you just never know what you get when you use /bin/sh. I remember replacing /bin/sh with /bin/bash in gcc's build system to get it to work on some system at some point. Life is too short to keep having to fight silliness like this and I can't see a valid reason why a system building a Linux kernel, or for that matter gcc, should not have the bash shell installed on it.
And on some systems, changing /bin/sh to point to /bin/bash can result in subtle problems with that system's environment, so that is not a good option. At least by using /bin/bash you know what you get and the dependency is then known to all.
-- Mark Rustad, MRustad@gmail.com
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