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67d34a1
(Get the code!)
sparr wrote:
> The Ubuntu devs have done a far greater good here than with
> any other distro I have used in the past. Being willing to take
> steps like this, instead of waiting for optional compliance that will
> never happen, is exactly what we need more of.
While going on a crusade to rid the world of Bashisms is certainly a noble pursuit. It is also a futile one if it only involves one Linux distro. If ALL of the distros decided to make that a priority, then we might get somewhere. But one distro among many isn't going to force that change all by itself, and certainly not by making a sudden switch and telling people after-the-fact that they need to start hounding the developers of other applications to stop using Bashisms.
If the assumption that /bin/sh pointed to bash is a concern for the Ubuntu developers, they should figure out a way to bring it to the attention of the Linux community as a whole that won't seriously diminish the user experience of Ubuntu in the process. The developers of those many applications out there that no longer install correctly on Ubuntu (add Zimbra to that list) aren't going to feel the pain of this decision. The users of Ubuntu will.
And we're not just talking about the so-called "average" or "non-technical" users here. If a developer decides to switch to Ubuntu and then discovers that some of the software he needs to do his job is having problems installing on Ubuntu, he doesn't have time to figure out why. He's gonna come to the conclusion that Ubuntu just isn't as stable as the distro he had been using and he'll switch back to it. And the more people encounter this problem, the more Ubuntu will get a reputation of not working correctly. Somehow I don't think that's the reputation the managment of Ubuntu wants for their distro.
I can certainly sympathize with Mark's loss of faith in the Ubuntu developers for making this decision and forcing this situation upon their users. I'm planning on using Ubuntu more and more for production server and this definitely makes me a bit uneasy about that decision. I don't want to upgrade a production server at some point in the future only to find that a bunch of stuff stops working because the developers made some subtle changes and just didn't care about the fact that those changes would cause a lot of problems for their users.
Nonetheless, Ubuntu is a great distro, and despite this poor decision I for one plan to continue to use it. Luckily it has an easy fix. I hope, however, that the developers will be more careful about changes like this in the future.
--Dan