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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!plaster.csdc.toshiba.com.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!goliath.apana.org.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!ns.saard.net!news.camtech.com.au!calypso.bns.com.au!not-for-mail From: mike@calypso.bns.com.au (Michael Talbot-Wilson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Is replacing /bin/sh with bash recommended? Date: 23 Mar 1996 23:34:56 +1030 Organization: Calypso & That Jazz Lines: 46 Message-ID: <4j0sto$scs@calypso.bns.com.au> References: <4ih5qb$lae@blackice.winternet.com> <4ik5p6$qm6@helena.mt.net> <DoJrqo.6F9@twwells.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: calypso.bns.com.au X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 CURRENT #3 bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes: >In article <4ik5p6$qm6@helena.mt.net>, >Nate Williams <nate@sneezy.sri.com> wrote: >: In article <4ih5qb$lae@blackice.winternet.com>, >: John D. Boggs <jdb@robigo.winternet.com> wrote: >: >What sort of nasties (if any) should I expect if I replace /bin/sh >: >with bash in FreeBSD-2.1.0? >: >: Big ones. >This is a load of shit. Since I converted to NetBSD/FreeBSD on the >various machines I've used over the last two odd years, I have >*always* replaced /bin/sh with a statically linked bash. Except The first two things you need to do after installing FreeBSD are (1) compile bash; (2) compile tcsh. The latter because adduser and some humans have a quaint preference for a C-shell, but you want to give them a civilised environment with good line editing / history control. The third is to compile GNU fileutils with the color patch for ls. It's a pity this is not all done for us in the distribution. The default user shell (csh) is a shocker. >It's also worth noting *why* I switched to bash: because the !@#$ >shell that comes with the system had problems, "big ones", in >dealing with many shell scripts.... I don't think there is any such problem with ash. Of course if you write bash scripts you need bash.... >There is only one reason to not use bash instead of the standard >shell and that's that bash is about 40% bigger. Still, there's no That is not the reason. Slackware (a Linux distribution) comes with /bin/sh a symlink to bash. My guess is that there is some political reason. You need a small shell for use during the actual installation, when it might need to be on a floppy. >way I'd use the existing shell; in a word, it sucks, it always has >sucked, and probably will never get any better -- because the >*reason* for using it instead of bash is that it's smaller. Add >the stuff to make it as useful as bash and it'll be as big as >bash... at which point, you might just as well use bash. Er... the bash maintainer says bash is "too big and too slow". It's not a lot more feature-laden than pdksh, which is a lot smaller.