[Resolvconf-devel] Bug#519364: Not depending on bash

[Stefan Monnier]

> However, I don't see much advantage in eliminating the dependency
> on bash.  Even if we were to eliminate use of /bin/bash from all resolvconf
> scripts, one couldn't remove the bash package

I removed bash on my system, and it wasn't hard: "apt-get remove bash".
You do have to confirm very explicitly that you indeed want to remove an
essential package, but other than that, it all works.
Of course I had installed dash (as /bin/sh) first.

> --- because it's an Essential: yes package.  And even if one could, it
> would only save a little bit of disk space.

In some cases, every bit counts (in my case, I only have 250MB, and
need/want things like X11 and Emacs).  Debian is pretty good at scaling
down without losing much convenience if any (I did have to forgo
aptitude, for example, but apt-get is still amazingly good compared to
opkg).  Relying a bit less on bash would make it yet a bit better in
this respect.  And truly, very few packages rely on bash in my
experience.  Until now the only other package I bumped into that needed
bash was libpam0 (used in one of the post-inst scripts).


        Stefan


PS: To tell you truth, I'm also biased against bash: I find most
bashisms unreadable and I'd bet that only seasoned bashers can remember
what they mean, whereas they can almost always be rewritten using more
traditional constructs (including sed) which are easier to remember
(because sooner or later you have to use sed anyway).  Same holds for
zshisms, of course (I'm an avid zsh user).