[TUHS] Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register

[Alexander Schreiber]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2024 at 06:25:31PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 11:01:40AM +1000, Alexis wrote:
> > 
> > The issue isn't about learning shell scripting _per se_. It's about the
> > extent to which _volunteers_ have to go beyond the _basics_ of shell
> > scripting to learn about the _complexities_ and _subtle issues_ involved in
> > using it to provide _robust_ service management. Including learning, for
> > example, that certain functionality one takes for granted in a given shell
> > isn't actually POSIX, and can't be assumed to be present in the shell one is
> > working with (not to mention that POSIX-compatibility might need to be
> > actively enabled, as in the case of e.g. ksh, via POSIXLY_CORRECT).
> 
> This is sort of off topic but maybe relevant.
> 
> When I was running my company, my engineers joked that if it were invented
> after 1980 I wouldn't let them use it.  Which wasn't true, we used mmap().
> 
> But the underlying sentiment sort of was true.  Even though they were
> all used to bash, I tried very hard to not use bash specific stuff.
> And it paid off, in our hey day, we supported SCO, AIX, HPUX, SunOS,
> Solaris, Tru64, Linux on every architecture from tin to IBM mainframes,
> Windows, Macos on PPC and x86, etc.  And probably a bunch of other
> platforms I've forgotten.
> 
> *Every* time they used some bash-ism, it bit us in the ass.  I kept
> telling them "our build environment is not our deployment environment".
> We had a bunch of /bin/sh stuff that we shipped so we had to go for 
> the common denominator.

My latest brush with someone using bash in the wrong place was when
I saw the configure scripts for GlusterFS break on NetBSD. Because
someone had used bash 4 syntax in the configure scripts ... presumably
on a Linux variant where /bin/sh == /bin/bash. While that was easy to
fix (and the PR accepted and patched in) I shouldn't have had to fix
that in the first place ... 

Kind regards,
            Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison