Re: Bash vs. sh

[Joel E. Denny]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008, Jim Meyering wrote:

> > as the preferred method for getting started, avoiding the need to check in
> > bootstrap?  Or even have a two-level bootstrap: ./bootstrap is a simple
> > checked-in wrapper which portably calls autom4te on bootstrap_inner.m4sh
> > then runs bootstrap_inner with the expectation of a better shell?
> 
> Actually, I like that.
> Are you interested in writing the patch?

As long as we're discussing a two-level bootstrap....

How many packages are syncing their bootstrap scripts with Coreutils?  
Bison has made some changes to bootstrap that Coreutils might benefit 
from, and vice-versa.  If there are other projects besides Bison and 
Coreutils, maybe bootstrap_inner.m4sh, like GNUmakefile, should be placed 
in gnulib.  Your bootstrap wrapper would download it before running 
autom4te.  This wrapper will hopefully remain much simpler than 
bootstrap_inner.m4sh and rarely require syncing among projects.  Besides, 
the wrapper may be a place for project-specific bootstrap tasks that 
bootstrap_inner.m4sh doesn't handle, if any.