Re: [PATCH] Allow shell scripts to run with non-Bash /bin/sh

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 22, 2007, 06:54 UTC
Message-ID: <7vhclngpgd.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070922035434.GA99140@void.codelabs.ru>

Eygene Ryabinkin <rea-git@codelabs.ru> writes:

Show 15 quoted lines

> By the way, my FreeBSD is 7-CURRENT, but I'll test on 6-STABLE
> and perhaps on 4-STABLE on Monday.
> ...
>> That is, what does the shell say if you do this?
>> 
>> 	case Ultra in
>>         Super)
>>         	false ;;
>> 	Hyper)
>>         	true ;;
>> 	esac &&
>>         echo case returned ok
>
> It says 'case returned ok', so I will try to understand why it
> works here and does not work in the 'while' construct.

I vaguely recall somebody else had exactly this issue and he concluded that the shell was busted. I do not recall the details of the story but interestingly, if he did something that accesses "$#" before the problematic "while case $# in ..." the shell behaved for him in his experiments.

Just to make sure you do not misunderstand me, I am not trying to be difficult. I am trying to assess (1) if it is sensible to support that broken shell, and (2) if so what the exact breakage is, especially because as the above shows the breakage does not look like what your "fix" literally suggests, and what is involved in working it around.

Also by my comment about "/bin/sh and bash not being the only shells available on FreeBSD", I did not mean that you should change your /bin/sh. You can build git with SHELL_PATH make varilable pointing at a non-broken shell, which does not have to be installed as /bin/sh.