Re: [PATCH] tools/configure: drop BASH configure variable [and 1 more messages]

[Ian Jackson <ian.jackson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jan Beulich writes ("Re: [PATCH] tools/configure: drop BASH configure 
variable"):
> On 29.06.2020 14:05, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > Jan Beulich writes ("Re: [PATCH] tools/configure: drop BASH configure 
> > variable"):
> >> On 26.06.2020 19:00, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> >> ... this may or may not take effect on the file system the sources
> >> are stored on.
> > 
> > In what circumstances might this not take effect ?
> 
> When the file system is incapable of recording execute permissions?
> It has been a common workaround for this in various projects that
> I've worked with to use $(SHELL) to account for that, so the actual
> permissions from the fs don't matter. (There may be mount options
> to make everything executable on such file systems, but people may
> be hesitant to use them.)

I don't think we support building from sources which have been
unpacked onto such filesystems.  Other projects which might actually
need to build on Windows or something do do this $(SHELL) thing or an
equivalent, but I don't think that's us.

But obviously that opinion of mine is not a blocker for Andy's patch
since Andy is going in the right direction, regardless.

Andrew Cooper writes ("[PATCH v2] tools/configure: drop BASH configure 
variable"):
> This is a weird variable to have in the first place.  The only user of it is
> XSM's CONFIG_SHELL, which opencodes a fallback to sh, and the only two scripts
> run with this are shebang sh anyway, so don't need bash in the first place.
> 
> Make the mkflask.sh and mkaccess_vector.sh scripts executable, drop the
> CONFIG_SHELL, and drop the $BASH variable to prevent further use.

In response to this commit message, I wrote:

> > Andrew Cooper writes ("[PATCH] tools/configure: drop BASH configure 
> > variable"):
> > Thanks for this cleanup.  I agree with the basic idea.
> >
> > However, did you run these scripts with dash, or review them, to check
> > for bashisms ?

And you replied:

> Yes, to all of the above.
> 
> They are both very thin wrappers (doing some argument shuffling) around
> large AWK scripts.

Can you please put this information in the commit message where it
belongs ?  As a rule we should know in future what we were thinking
when a change was made, and as I say "are shebang sh anyway, so don't
need bash in the first place" is weak evidence.

With that change,

Acked-by: Ian Jackson <ian.jackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Thanks,
Ian.