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Re: pre/post install scripts and pre-depends

Consider:

I) bash alone (if, while, case, test, $[], |, functions)
II) bash+dd
III) bash+sed

and:

1) coding inputs strangely
2) coding time
3) machine time

A surprising number of scripts can be done with I), without bumping
against 1), 2) or 3).

II) largely eliminates concern 1).  Think "turing machine" or "state
machine".

Very nearly all of the shell-programming pantheon (awk, grep, cut,...) is
syntactic sugar for III.  That largely eliminates concerns 1) and 2).

I arrived at III) as sufficiently powerful/expressive, when writing a
table-driven X terminal /etc/rc* setup (Xkernel, swapless, 100% shared,
readonly, NFS-mounted root filesystem), and trying to minimize the number
of things I'd need to recompile statically.  There was already a static sh
available, so...

For concern 3), it is often possible to just lean on pipes and avoid
while's.  Minimizing exec's makes all the difference in the world, for
shell programming performance.

Cute pseudo-benefit to minizing exec's: this can (relatively often) 
result in scripts that run equally well under /bin/sh and /bin/csh,
without preprocessing.

Anyway, IMO install scripts for debian should lean on bash, and the shell
utilities in base, and...  perhaps pre-depend on base.  If ya Gotta go
with something other than bash, why not python or slang?  Or even
#!/usr/bin/awk?

On Sun, 29 Dec 1996, Bruce Perens wrote:

> Ian Jackson has the final say on dpkg-related policies. I dislike perl
> but it's diffficult to make a complex installation script in bash, and
> you end up relying on a larger tool-set than perl - sed, cut, paste,
> etc. I'd prefer that {pre,post}{install,rm} scripts be written for bash
> if at all possible.
> 
> I think it makes sense for _all_ packages to have a pre-dependency on
> the package that provides the interpreter for their
> {pre/post}{install/rm}.
> 
> Christophe, can you make "debmake" provide this pre-dependency if it
> does not do so presently?
> 
> 	Thanks
> 
> 	Bruce
> --
> Bruce Perens K6BP   Bruce@Pixar.com
> Finger bruce@master.Debian.org for PGP public key.
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> 
> 
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