CentOS - Apr 2015 - Real sh? Or other efficient shell for non-interactive scripts

Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> wrote:
> On Apr 27, 2015, at 4:38 AM, Joerg Schilling <Joerg.Schilling at
fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:
> > 
> > This is the SVr4 Bourne Shell, so you need to take into account what
has been
> > added with Svr4:
>
> Is there any difference between your osh and the Heirloom Bourne Shell?
>
>   http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/sh.html
Heirloom did make quick and dirty ports and then stopped working.

Heirloom e.g. did make the same attempt to port to platforms that may cause 
problems with own malloc() implemenetaions:

-	add a private malloc for sh internal use based on mmap().

This however caused problems with some Linux distros that have been reported 
against my old Bourne Shell port, so I assume the same problems exist with 
Heirloom.

Heirloom added support for uname -S and for some linux ulimit extensions but 
then stopped working on the code after a few months

You still cannot get a working Bourne Shell from heirloom that behaves exactly 
like the Solaris shell.

My code added a lot more new features and it converted the code cleanly to use 
malloc() from libc. My code also allows all the modifications to be disabled 
via #ifdef's. This happens with "osh".

My code is actively maintained and fixed _all_ documented historic bugs, see:

	http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/bourne/


> I see that you already wrote up the differences between osh and bosh in an
earlier post.  Is there a good reason why these comparisons are not on the
Schily Tools web page already? :)
The schily tools act as a container to publish the current code state. There is 
no such maintained web page. Given the fact that Sven Maschek wrote down a lot, 
it seems the information is still here.

I would be interested to understand why Heirloom seems to so well known and my 
portability attempts seem to be widely unknown.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                    (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Joerg Schilling
<Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:
> >
> I would be interested to understand why Heirloom seems to so well known and
my
> portability attempts seem to be widely unknown.
>
Not sure why it matters with a standalone application like sh, but I
think a lot of people have been put off by the GPL incompatibility
with your tools.   If you want popularity - and usability, a
dual-license would work as perl shows.

-- 
    Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com

Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Joerg Schilling
> <Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:
> > >
> > I would be interested to understand why Heirloom seems to so well
known and my
> > portability attempts seem to be widely unknown.
> >
>
> Not sure why it matters with a standalone application like sh, but I
> think a lot of people have been put off by the GPL incompatibility
> with your tools.   If you want popularity - and usability, a
> dual-license would work as perl shows.
??? There is nothing different with heirloom.

And the problem is the GPL. I recommend you to work on making all GPL code 
freely combinable with other OSS.

My code is fully legal and there is absolutely no license problem with it.

Just do not follow the false claims from some OSS enemies...and believe the 
lawyers that checked my code ;-)

My code was audited by "Sun legal", "Oracle legal" and by
the legal department
from SuSe. 

Question: when will RedHat follow the legal audits from these companies?

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                    (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

On Apr 27, 2015, at 9:07 AM, Joerg Schilling <Joerg.Schilling at
fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:
> 
> Heirloom added support for uname -S and for some linux ulimit extensions
but
> then stopped working on the code after a few months
Ah.  I had no idea it was in a state of disrepair.
>> I see that you already wrote up the differences between osh and bosh in
an earlier post.  Is there a good reason why these comparisons are not on the
Schily Tools web page already? :)
> 
> The schily tools act as a container to publish the current code state.
There is
> no such maintained web page.
I was referring to the summary on the SourceForge page, where you just list the
contents of the package without explaining why one would want to download it.
> I would be interested to understand why Heirloom seems to so well known and
my
> portability attempts seem to be widely unknown.
I can think of several explanations:

1. The Heirloom pages explain what features each download provides, rather than
just give a list of program names.

If you tell me that I can download ?bsh?, I have no idea why I want bsh based
solely on its name.  If you tell me that I can download ?od?, I reply that I
already have a functioning version of od, thank you very much. :)

2. Many of those who might be interested in your osh are already well served by
the Ancient Unix V7 + SIMH combination:

  http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/ancient/

You are left with the subset of people who want to run something other than the
shells that come with their OS, and who want it to run natively.

I should point out that a lot of people using the Ancient Unix images actually
don?t want old bugs fixed.

3. It?s not clear from the files I?ve peeked into in your source distribution
when bsh first became available in an OSI-approved form, but it seems to be
sometime in the 2005-2007 range.

If that is true, then bsh is several years late to fill a gap already filled by
ash, in the same way that the prior existence of bash makes the open-source
version of ksh93 uninteresting to most people.

This is why you need a web page to sell your project: to explain why someone
should abandon bash, zsh, ash, dash, posh, ksh93u+, mksh?

4. CDDL annoys a lot of people.  Yes, I know, GPL annoys a lot of people, too. 
But again, you?re going up against ash, which is BSD, which annoys almost no
one. :)

Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> wrote:
> > The schily tools act as a container to publish the current code state.
There is
> > no such maintained web page.
>
> I was referring to the summary on the SourceForge page, where you just list
the contents of the package without explaining why one would want to download
it.
I thought I don't need to make advertizing for well known software.

I manage the only actively maintained portable Bourne Shell and I do so
as well for SCCS.

> > I would be interested to understand why Heirloom seems to so well
known and my
> > portability attempts seem to be widely unknown.
>
> I can think of several explanations:
>
> 1. The Heirloom pages explain what features each download provides, rather
than just give a list of program names.
The problem is that the developes page cannot contain much information and in 
general, I prefer to code than to write advertizing.

> If you tell me that I can download ?bsh?, I have no idea why I want bsh
based solely on its name.  If you tell me that I can download ?od?, I reply that
I already have a functioning version of od, thank you very much. :)
Bsh is mainly in schily tools to show people how the first shell with an 
interactive editable history did look like. Bsh != Bourne Shell.
It was named bsh because I implemented my history editor at H. Berthold AG
while working on a depanded page variant of UNOS.
> 2. Many of those who might be interested in your osh are already well
served by the Ancient Unix V7 + SIMH combination:
>
>   http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/ancient/
>
> You are left with the subset of people who want to run something other than
the shells that come with their OS, and who want it to run natively.
>
> I should point out that a lot of people using the Ancient Unix images
actually don?t want old bugs fixed.
>
> 3. It?s not clear from the files I?ve peeked into in your source
distribution when bsh first became available in an OSI-approved form, but it
seems to be sometime in the 2005-2007 range.
>
> If that is true, then bsh is several years late to fill a gap already
filled by ash, in the same way that the prior existence of bash makes the
open-source version of ksh93 uninteresting to most people.
>
> This is why you need a web page to sell your project: to explain why
someone should abandon bash, zsh, ash, dash, posh, ksh93u+, mksh?
I am not interested in working against ksh93, as this is much closer to POSIX 
than the current Bourne Shell. The Bourne Shell however is a nice idea for the 
system shell in /bin/sh because it is faster than bash and as fast as ksh93 but 
much smaller (if you use the UNIX linker, you can implement lazy linking that 
causes it to be only 80 kB when interpreting scripts). See:

	http://schillix.sourceforge.net/man/man1/ld.1.html

for the UNIX linker man page, -zlazyload

> 4. CDDL annoys a lot of people.  Yes, I know, GPL annoys a lot of people,
too.  But again, you?re going up against ash, which is BSD, which annoys almost
no one. :)
The CDDL does not annoy people, this is just a fairy tale from some OSS enemies.
BTW: I am of course not against ash, I just support the Bourne Shell.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                    (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'