Re: Mac OS X /bin/sh was zsh, to be replaced with bash

[Oliver Kiddle <okiddle@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jos Backus wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 07:09:39PM +0100, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> > If you manage to make contact with apple, please keep us informed.
> 
> You make some good points there.

If you're giving points to folk at Apple then I can suggest plenty more,
including:

	The loadable modules in zsh 4.x make zsh much smaller and more
	efficient as a non-interactive shell which is the typical use
	of /bin/sh.

	With the future POSIX standard we have been discussing with
	David Korn (ksh author) and Chet Ramey (bash author), zsh will
	likely be a long way ahead of bash. Not that anything is
	going to happen with that anytime soon.

	bash's GPL licence would leave Apple with less flexibility.
	They might for example want to write a shell module for GUI
	interaction. With bash, it'd have to be contributed back as GPL
	code. With zsh, it could be APSL, closed source, zsh licence or
	any other licence. I might discourage the closed approach but
	from Apple's perspective they'd be keeping their options open.

	The explicit emulate command in zsh actually allows zsh to go
	much further than bash in emulating POSIX. Extra reserved words
	can be disabled etc. The only way that bash is more compatible
	is that it adds fewer additional features.

The only argument in favour of bash is that more people are familiar
with it from Linux but then bash is largely a subset of zsh anyway.

And, I expect that ksh93 would require them to pay a lot of money to
AT&T.

> I just sent an e-mail to Jordan, I'll let you know when I hear from him.

Thanks. If we don't hear anything we should try other channels. It
would be a pity if they adopted bash. I've been very impressed with
much of what Apple has done with Mac OS X. Two years ago, if someone
had suggested I buy a Mac, I'd have made facetious remarks about one
button mice. Today I'd be extremely tempted.

Oliver

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