#!/bin/bash

[Matt Kettler]

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Nerijus Baliunas wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 23:33:41 +0000 Drew Marshall <drew at THEMARSHALLS.CO.UK> wrote:
> 
> 
>>>have #!/bin/bash at the first line, and I have to change it to
>>>#!/usr/local/bin/bash on my FreeBSD system. If they are not using
>>>any bash'isms it would be better to change all #!/bin/bash to #!/ 
>>>bin/sh.
>>
>>Did you install from the ports tree? This is all fixed in there  
>>automagically.
> 
> 
> No, but I want it to be fixed in distribution (and then it will be one less
> patch in ports :).
> 

I would tend to agree.. if you're not really using any bash features, you should
be using /bin/sh for the scripts. It makes things so much more portable.

Fixing it in the ports tree solves the symptoms, but there's a more general
problem here of "upping the bar higher than is required".

I make these three points:

1) Pretty much everybody has a /bin/sh. This is a POSIX standard, and nearly
every *nix out there conforms to this part of the standard. Sure there are a few
exceptions, but these are very rare.

2) There is no standard that specifies bash configuration that's common to
different major *nix flavors (Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc). For example LSB might
specify bash, but that only applies to Linux variants.

3) Everybody who has bash has sh, since bash supports being invoked as sh.
However, not everybody who has sh has bash. (Yes, there are folks out there who
consider bash an optional add-on, not a core OS feature, hence it appearing in
/usr/bin.)

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