UsrMove feature (was Re: FESCo meeting minutes for 2011-10-24)

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Michał Piotrowski <mkkp4x4 at gmail.com> said:
> 2011/10/25 Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>:
> > Once upon a time, Michał Piotrowski <mkkp4x4 at gmail.com> said:
> >> I created feature page
> >> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F18MorePortableInterpreters
> >
> > I strongly object to this "feature".  /bin/sh is a Unix standard back to
> > IIRC around 7th Edition, and there is NO good reason to break it.  The
> > "#!/usr/bin/env foo" suggested replacement has always been a hack to
> > work around broken systems, not something suggested for all scripts.
> 
> What is wrong with
> #!/usr/bin/env interpreter
> from technical POV?

It is an unnecessary hack, since the intepreters all have standard
locations.  It also adds the overhead of a second exec() call and a PATH
search (start env, let it parse its command line, then search the PATH
for the desired interpreter, then exec() the interpreter).

It also makes system scripts more fragile; for example, if somebody
installs (from source) a different version of python in /usr/local/bin,
all RPM-installed scripts in /usr/bin (that may not even work with that
version) will now use the new version with unpredictable results.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.