[Info-vax] CLI editing, was: Re: VMS - Virtual Terminals - A security risk way back yonder OR was that an Old Wives Tale ?

[William Pechter]

In article <mailman.3.1455519468.4217.info-vax_rbnsn.com at rbnsn.com>,
 <lists at openmailbox.org> wrote:
>On Sun, 14 Feb 2016 21:17:58 +0100
>Johnny Billquist via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2016-02-14 19:42, lists at openmailbox.org wrote:
>> > I know Johnny loves to argue so here's an example of UNIX with a
>> > statically linked shell. Read it and weep, babe.
>> 
>> Oh, I love to argue. No denying that. I just have this inability to keep 
>> quiet when I see something I think is wrong. :-)
>> 
>> By the way, I can build static binaries all day long. It's not hard.
>
>And yet, many UNIX installs provide a limited selection of shells. If you
>don't like any of those you're expected to compile your own with the build
>framework the OS provides- be it NetBSD pkgsrc, FreeBSD ports, or use
>precompiled binaries as in OpenBSD packages. Many if not most of those are
>set up to produce dynamically linked binaries. Furthermore, most if not all
>of those package management and build systems keep addons and anything
>that isn't considered part of "base" in /usr/local or other filesystems
>that won't necessarily be available in single user mode.
>
>> But I still find the concept of a "default" shell a bit weird.
>
>Nevertheless, many UNIX installs come with a very limited selection of
>shells. When you useradd or go through various adduser scripts there are
>indeed defaults for shell and many other things.
>
>> I've never seen problems using whatever shell I personally prefer, no
>> matter what shells were already installed or not, and they have never
>> been in the way of installing whatever other software needed, so I find
>> the claim that you stick to bash in Linux because of some problem just
>> super weird.
>
>Bad day to use google-translate? I never made such a claim. What I said
>is many if not most Linux apps need bash to compile. Autotools, configure
>scripts, and other build pieces for Linux apps often break with a shell
>other than bash. Of course this is not because bash is so wonderful. It is
>because most Linux developers don't realize there is anything outside of
>Linux so they use bash extensions and gcc extensions etc. and write mostly
>non-portable code and scripts.
>

Which is why I liked the old rn/elm configure scripts from the pre-gnu
configure 80's which would recognise Eunice running under VMS.

Gnu configure is only useful on more Unix-y like systems of the 90's.

Bill





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