zfs discuss - May 2006 - About "/usr/sbin/zfs" and ksh93/libshell.so ...

Hi!

----

Is there any interest to turn the "zfs" utility (to clarify: This is
about a change in the "zfs" utility itself, not about any
"language
bindings" etc.) from it''s (currently) "homegrown"
command-line parsing
code over to ksh93/libshell.so (this has been proposed by Amersham/GE
Healthcare staff a while ago for the original "ksh93-integration"
project proposal, see
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/ksh93-integration/ for the
project''s home page) ?

The idea would be that "zfs" would simply employ libshell.so
(libshell.so is ksh93 made available as shared library) for that job and
all "zfs"-specific commands get implemented as builtins. This may save
lots of complexity, add i18n/l10n support in a very easy way and would
give the "zfs" utility full access to the ksh93 syntax (including |if
... else|, |while|-loops, job control and so on...) and other facilities
like profiles/roles (since ksh93 can also act as profile shell) ...

Comments/suggestions/etc. welcome... :-)

----

Bye,
Roland

-- 
  __ .  . __
 (o.\ \/ /.o) roland.mainz at nrubsig.org
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programmer
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 (;O/ \/ \O;)

On 09/05/2006, at 12:21 PM, Roland Mainz wrote:
> Is there any interest to turn the "zfs" utility (to clarify: This
is
> about a change in the "zfs" utility itself, not about any
"language
> bindings" etc.) from it''s (currently) "homegrown"
command-line parsing
> code over to ksh93/libshell.so (this has been proposed by Amersham/GE
> Healthcare staff a while ago for the original "ksh93-integration"
> project proposal, see
> http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/ksh93-integration/ for the
> project''s home page) ?
>
> The idea would be that "zfs" would simply employ libshell.so
> (libshell.so is ksh93 made available as shared library) for that  
> job and
> all "zfs"-specific commands get implemented as builtins. This may
save
> lots of complexity, add i18n/l10n support in a very easy way and would
> give the "zfs" utility full access to the ksh93 syntax (including
|if
> ... else|, |while|-loops, job control and so on...) and other  
> facilities
> like profiles/roles (since ksh93 can also act as profile shell) ...
>
> Comments/suggestions/etc. welcome... :-)
I may be the only one who doesn''t understand this correctly, but are  
you saying that "zfs" would become a kind of extended ksh93, a little
like "expect" is an extended "tcl"?

If so, I think I''m opposed. I don''t see any reason to
arbitrarily
start adding scripting language functionality to commands that can be  
adequately called from many different scripting languages already.

On the other hand, I may have grossly misunderstood.

Thanks,
Boyd
- Melbourne, Australia