From: Magnus Bäck <baeck@google.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:35:11 GMT
Subject: Re: Python extension commands in git - request for policy change
Message-ID: <20121127143510.GA15831@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s0WYiV3hTE7u28_Wd59FkGfu3o_psS0gocpnibzN4--Fg@mail.gmail.com>

On Sunday, November 25, 2012 at 06:40 EST,
     Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Michael Haggerty
> <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

[...]

> > On the contrary, there is *constant* traffic on the mailing list
> > about incompatibilities between different shell implementations (sh,
> > dash, bash, etc), not to mention those in other utilities (sed,
> > grep, etc) that one is forced to work with in shell scripts.
> > Compatibility is a *huge* pain when developing shell code for git.
> > The fact that users typically don't encounter such problems is due
> > to the hard work of POSIX lawyers on the mailing list correcting the
> > compatibility errors of mortal programmers.
>
> *Theoretical* incompatibilities on probably obscure systems. *I* have
> never seen such compatibility issues *in practice*.

While "constant traffic" probably overstates the issue, these are not
theoretical problems. I recall at least three cases in the last year
or so where Git has seen breakage with Solaris or Mac OS X because
of sed or tr incompatibilities, and I don't even read this list that
thoroughly.

[...]

-- 
Magnus Bäck
baeck@google.com