Re: dealing with executable shell scripts

[Miles Bader]

Russ Allbery <address@hidden> writes:
>> [Relying on source-code execute bits always being correctly
>> maintained is one of those things that ... well... doesn't really
>> feel very robust.  I dunno, maybe it's just me...]
>
> Doesn't every package with a configure script rely on this?  I suppose
> that people could chmod +x the configure script before running it, but
> I've never had to do that.

You can just do "sh configure"... (and I think autoconf/automake are
careful to never rely on the execute bits of helper scripts being
set).

Anyway, it's not really the same issue.  "configure" is either part of
an official distribution tarball (which is a relatively controlled
environment) or explicitly built (where the build process can arrange
for the execute bit to be set if appropriate).

The shell-scripts in question, however, are source files, and so come
directly via whatever mechanism you use to get source files -- tar,
cp, random-vcs-xyz, ....  In many cases such mechanisms can preserve
execute bits, but ... it doesn't feel quite right to rely on that
always being the case....

-miles

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