[tldistro] bash-ism and libtool and tl

[Karl Berry]

The report from peb about bash/libtool/tl.  Bottom line is that current
tl svn should build with most any sh, definitely not requiring bash or
POSIX features.


Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:56:36 +0100 (CET)
From: Peter Breitenlohner

(1) It isn't exactly bash-ism but rather POSIX-ism, assuming some moderately
recent POSIX requirements for Bourne-compatible shells.  They are met by
bash and quite a few others, but don't ask me for details.

(2) Configure tests /bin/sh and if necessary uses another shell and the
chosen (sh or other) shell is then propagated to Make and further to
Libtool.  However, this was not handled correctly in TL2009, and the problem
was only understood when the distro (iso image) was ready.

(3) As a consequence for the TL2009 distro it may be necessary to use, e.g.,
   CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/bash ./Build
or some csh equivalent (compare Autoconf manual 16.9).

That should no longer be necessary for the current TL-SVN.