[Nix-dev] Let's switch the default shell in Nixpks / NixOS to csh

[Arseniy Seroka]

Why can't we choose zsh?
It's similar to bash, but don't have it's problems.
It's autocomplete systems is fast enough. No security problems AFAIK.
As for me - I'm against csh because it's really unpopular and many users
will be disappointed. Myself, I heart nothing good about csh (my bad, but
I'm not alone I think).

2015-04-02 0:26 GMT+03:00 Peter Simons <simons at cryp.to>:

> Hi guys,
>
> the default builder in Nixpkgs (and pretty much all other shell code in
> all our
> packages) assumes that it's interpreted by "bash". Now, we've had a lot of
> trouble with "bash" recently:
>
>  - crazy security vulnerabilities;
>
>  - auto completion is slow, gives unexpected results, or doesn't work at
> all;
>
>  - /bin/sh is not "bash" on many non-NixOS host systems; and
>
>  - many of other problems.
>
> This makes me wonder whether maybe we should switch all shell scripting in
> Nixpkgs to "csh"? Wouldn't that solve a lot of problems? I've heard
> experts say
> that "csh" is generally considered superior for scripting tasks because of
> its
> more intuitive syntax.
>
> Now, the only minor obstacle is to transition the existing package base
> from
> "bash" to "csh". That wouldn't be difficult to accomplish, though. There's
> probably a bash2csh converter available somewhere that we could use.
>
> Of course, for consistency's sake we'd have to make "csh" the only
> supported
> user shell for accounts on NixOS machines too. We don't want our users
> messing
> with other shells. All that diversity will just make our lives harder as
> developers. These people will drive us crazy with bug reports on Github,
> complaining about how they freaky "bash" environment no longer works with
> "nix-shell" etc., and that's just going to be a maintenance nightmare. It's
> probably better to decide once and for all that Nix supports only "csh" and
> move on to other, more important things.
>
> Anyway, let me know that you think. Shall I prepare a pull request?
>
> Best regards,
> Peter
>
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>



-- 
Sincerely,
Arseniy Seroka
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