Re: [PATCH 0/2] Make run-command.c honour SHELL_PATH

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 09:38:45AM -0400, Ben Walton wrote:

quoted

A second reaction was to wonder why the usual fixup from
v1.6.4-rc0~66^2~1 (Makefile: insert SANE_TOOL_PATH to PATH before
/bin or /usr/bin, 2009-07-08) didn't apply.  Should the git wrapper
prepend the same magic to $PATH that git-sh-setup.sh does to make
the behavior of scripted and unscripted commands a little more
consistent?

I did some poking at this before creating my patch as that is what I'd
expected too.  It would likely be a good idea, but in my case, even
that wouldn't help.

I add /opt/csw/gnu:/opt/csw/bin:/usr/xpg4/bin to the SANE_TOOL_PATH
but set the SHELL_PATH to /opt/csw/bin/bash.  Without my patch, but
with SANE_TOOL_PATH honoured, I'd still see /opt/csw/bin/sh forked and
that sh is crippled too.

So that leads me to think that if we're going to fork a shell, it
should be one that we know to be good...if the builder has provided
that value.  I think you agree with this based on your next comment.

What is /opt/csw/bin/sh? Is it a symlink to bash (which would mean bash
running in POSIX mode)? Or is it a lightweight shell like ash? Or
something else?

The point of SHELL_PATH is to provide a POSIX shell.  Generally, bash
behavior is a superset of POSIX, so you will not run into any
incompatibilities by running things with bash. But do be aware that you
are slightly incompatible with the rest of the world (so things that
work for you, for example, might not work for people using git with the
stock "shell is /bin/sh" configuration).

-Peff