Re: Autoconf should allow the developer to require a POSIX shell

[Paul Eggert]

On 06/28/2012 04:18 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> WDYT?  Is this something worth pursuing for Autoconf 2.70?

I think so.  As recently as Solaris 8 this approach
had trouble since the POSIXish shells were optional
and often were not installed.  However,
starting in Solaris 9 /usr/xpg4/bin/sh has been part of
the core packages so we can assume it's there.  If
someone wants to build on Solaris 8 or earlier we can
just ask them to install the optional SUNWxcu4
package, or (if that's too much trouble) to build and
install an old Bash version to bootstrap the latest
Bash version with.  Solaris 8 is still in use (I have
one production system at UCLA that still has it, for
software-licensing reasons) but it's well past the stage
where it's a common build target so it's OK to impose
on Solaris 8 some extra hassles like this.

It would be helpful to document this assumption in
the manual, if we take this step.