Bug#276419: [Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#276419: su appends the positional args to the command line

[Christian Perrier]

> > I think it is better to revert the patch, and just
> > document the fact that -c is always provided to the invoked shell
>=20
> Return to broken state and explicitly document that
> Debian has broken su? Please, don't do this!


Well, we need some decision here and here I come with my DD
hat.

I have followed the work on this bug and, first of all, I want to
thank you guys for the involved time and the neurones your burned on
that case...:-)

Now for the decision=A0: it seems that the change, even if justified by
technical reasons, is very likely to break other packages and maybe as
well some system administrators scripts, badly written or not.

We cannot afford this.

Debian has a longstanding reputation of stability (YES, even unstable)
and reliability. Breaking things without warning is *not* the Debian
Way and this is exactly what we did with this change (of course, non
intentionnally).

So, we have to leave time to our fellow maintainers to fix their
scripts/packages/work/whatever. We also have to find the better way to
do so. I have some ideas but others may pop up in the future.

So, first of all, we REVERT THE PATCH. Don't take it badly, Alex,
nothing pro or against you but this is, I think, the less worse
decision.

The bug will be reopened, as a reminder, even if we fix su.

Then we communicate with other Debian developers so that scripts which
assume the "incorrect" behaviour are fixed. If this involves a
transition (ie fixes cannot be made unless we change su), we organise
it. Being the origin of the needed changes, this is our duty.

To achieve this, we need a document which explains the behaviour
changes. This document MUST be as simple as possible and clearly
explain the issues, even for people who are not very aware of su
internals.

All this (managing the change) will be made AFTER we merge with
upstream.


We will make an urgent upload with reveted su behaviour and Nicolas
documentation in the man page. This change will also include the FTBFS
fix for kFreeBSD and Hurd. I will work on it at Debconf if I can't
sleep..:-)