svn 15150... what the?

[Rob Landley]

On Sunday 21 May 2006 2:59 pm, Bernhard Fischer wrote:
> click, click ?

I have no idea what you mean by that.

> On Sun, May 21, 2006 at 02:13:05PM -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
> >/bin/sh is posix.
>
> So what?

Why can't we trust /bin/sh to be there?  Will there ever be a sane environment 
that does _not_ have a /bin/sh linking to the preferred shell?

> >Why is /bin/sh not posix?
>
> Who said that?
>
> In makefiles, we have the variable SHELL.
>
> make is posix.

Our makefile uses lots of non-posix things, starting with ":=".

> See 'SHELL' in
> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/make.html

Ok, the first hit searching for "shell" in that is:

> [Option End]The value of the SHELL environment variable shall not be used as
> a macro and shall not be modified by defining the SHELL macro in a makefile
> or on the command line. All other environment variables, including those
> with null values, shall be used as macros, as defined in Macros.

I searched through all 23 hits on the word "shell" and it never actually 
described what that sucker is FOR or why you'd want to use it.

Do you know why?  "The standard mentions its existence, therefore we must use 
it" is not a good argument.  What's it _for_?

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.