Re: [shell functions]

[Christopher Currie]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 02:18:35PM -0500, Charles Wilson wrote:
> address@hidden wrote:
> >Bash uses configure.
> 
> And so does ash :-( which was my first thought for working around this 
> problem.  On the other hand, is it so terrible to ask that those who 
> wish to continue using systems with 20-year-old shells build bash/ash on 
> a modern system using a cross-compiler?

Hello, I'm a bit of lurker here on the list, but I wanted to throw in my
two cents on this issue. I don't have a problem with libtool using shell
functions; all POSIX compliant shells are supposed to support them. The
danger here is that if we make libtool dependent on some specific shell
feature, do we not make any software that uses libtool dependent on that
feature?

The beauty of libtool is that the developer of a package doesn't need to
concern herself with any platform specific issue; libtool abstracts them
away. I fear their may be a backlash if now every tool that uses libtool
has to include in their documentation a dependency on bash.

The other concern is that some systems may have bash installed, but not
as /bin/sh. If libtool depends on bash, it will need to locate it, not
just assume that its in /bin or /usr/bin

Thanks for listening,
Christopher