Re: Automake, Autoconf and POSIX shells (was: Re: GraphicsMagick Automake TAP)

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2012, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> > Under Solaris 10, I found that some fancy ksh-style syntax was
> > failing due to use of /bin/sh.
> You mean in your test scripts, or in the Automake-provided driver
> scripts?  The latter would be an Automake bug, while the former would
> be a user error: if you want to use POSIX features in your scripts,
> it's *your* responsibility to ensure they're run through a capable
> enough shell; Automake leaves the developer full freedom (and thus
> full burden) to decide which shell or interpreter (if any) must be
> used to run his tests.

This was in my own test scripts.  Certainly it is possible that a user 
TAP script might be written in something like guile, Tcl, Lua, Java, 
etc., rather than sh so Automake's TAP test driver can not 
automatically anticipate the test implementation approach.

> > For my test scripts, I have the option of either coding everything
> > to work with the weakest shell, or else hoping to find a better
> > shell on the system without the kind assistance of Automake.
> Yes (I'd personally go with the second option BTW).  And I believe
> this is not Automake's fault -- I believe it should be Autoconf to

It is true that as systems evolve, they typically offer more capable 
shells, even if they are not called /bin/sh.

My software's test suite does not need to work on systems more than 12 
years old.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/