Re: shells/bash port, add a knob which symlinks to /bin/bash ?

On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 2:38 PM, Bryan Drewery <bdrewery_at_freebsd.org> wrote:

>
> There's no reason for bash (and perl) to be exceptions to the 24000
> other ports that install to /usr/local/bin. I can think of dozens of
> other ports that will fall into the same arguments being made here, but
> it does not mean it is the right thing for FreeBSD.
>
> If you want to install the symlink on your system feel free to do it. I
> install a static bash to /bin/bash on mine and only because I prefer
> bash shell and want it in / for single-user mode. That's my personal
> choice though.
>
> The proper fix is to fix scripts to be portable and use #! /usr/bin/env
> bash rather than /bin/bash.
>

Technically, I agree with you that people should write portable shell
scripts,
and use #!/usr/bin/env bash rather than #!/bin/bash.

Pushing that behavior upstream is not always practical these days, where
FreeBSD is in the minority, while Linux and MacOS X are in the vast
majority of where
people are doing development and learning how to write shell scripts these
days.

The /bin/bash thing is relatively minor, but I brought it up, because I see
it so much.
I've seen it in the jobs that I've worked at.  I've also seen it when
dealing with Google
Summer of Code students.  I've seen it in blogs mentioned when Linux users
evaluate FreeBSD.
I've seen it when people design appliances based on FreeBSD, but want the
device to be
"familiar" enough for Linux-y devops people to interact with it.

If there are minor things that we can do in FreeBSD to improve the
out-of-box experience
of FreeBSD to new users who may be used to Linux or MacOS X, that would be
great.
Telling people to change their shell scripts, or manually create symlinks
to /bin/bash is doable,
but why not have something in the system do this automatically, so that the
average end-user does
not even have to think about it?

If adding an optional knob to the bash port which is OFF by default to do
this is a no-go,
would having an optional port like what Brooks Davis mentioned be allowed
which creates
the symlink and updates /etc/shells?

--
Craig