[Reproducible-builds] [xz-devel] Re: xz-utils: make the selected POSIX shell stable accross build environments

[Thorsten Glaser]

Ximin Luo dixit:

>bugs-gnulib, do you see any issue with this patch? The context is that

I’m not bugs-gnulib, but I’ve ported many a code using autotools to new
platforms (MirBSD, MidnightBSD, Interix, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD), and also
hacked autotools some. For added credibility, I’m the developer of mksh
(a contemporary kind of Korn shell).

I think this patch is not only harmful but also actually hinders your
higher goal of reproducibility.

$CONFIG_SHELL should stay the ultimate instance. Users absolutely MUST
be able to override not-working-but-recognised-as-good-enough system
shells like /bin/sh with this variable, to get things working even in
the presence of known bugs.

Au contraire, I suggest you to export CONFIG_SHELL in debian/rules,
possibly buildflags.mk even (ask Guillem if he’d mind adding it).

bye,
//mirabilos
-- 
FWIW, I'm quite impressed with mksh interactively. I thought it was much
*much* more bare bones. But it turns out it beats the living hell out of
ksh93 in that respect. I'd even consider it for my daily use if I hadn't
wasted half my life on my zsh setup. :-) -- Frank Terbeck in #!/bin/mksh