Re: Why does bash bundles readline instead of use a shared one?

[Garreau, Alexandre]

On 2018-05-28 at 19:41, Chet Ramey wrote:
> On 5/28/18 12:27 PM, Garreau, Alexandre wrote:
> 1. Bash has always had readline, even before there was a separate readline
>    distribution. There's no compelling reason to change this.

Oh okay!

> 3. Bash ships with as few external dependencies as possible. Many systems
>    do not ship a separate readline, and do not ship it as part of the base
>    system.

Wouldn’t then ask to build it separately, while still requiring it as a
mandatory dependency encourage more systems to ship readline, making it
more available to other programs and more likely to be embeded by them?
I’ve heared several times histories of readline convincing other
software to become GPL’d.  Also wouldn’t that save space by default on
embeded systems if they also may ship a separate readline?

> If you want to build bash and link it against a separately-built readline,
> as long as that version is current enough, there is a configure option to
> do it.

I’m still asking myself why Debian doesn’t do that… I think I should ask
there too, then.