Re: [Quilt-dev] problems with quilt mail

[Andreas Gruenbacher]

On Die, 2012-02-14 at 10:00 +0100, Jean Delvare wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 February 2012 12:56:42 am Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:
> > On Mon, 2012-02-13 at 22:34 +0100, Jean Delvare wrote:
> > > Hi Andreas,
> > >
> > > On Saturday 11 February 2012 10:42:59 pm Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:
> > > > I've pushed a few fixed to the fixes-0.51 branch:
> > >
> > > I see that you request bash version 3.2 now. This seems a little
> > > harsh to me. I have a system still running Slackware 12.0 (still
> > > supported), it comes with bash 3.1.17 and quilt is running fine on
> > > it as far as I can say. What are your specific concerns?
> > 
> > I don't really mind as long as I can use the pipefail feature.  Feel
> > free to reinstate compatibility with versions of bash that have that
> >  and don't have the quoting bug (the check which I removed from
> >  configure.ac when requiring 3.2).
> 
> My point is that your commit is wrong to start with. You claim that 
> "bash 3.1 is known to be broken already", but the bug in question was 
> only affecting the early 3.1 versions, 3.1.11 and later are OK, and 
> every user of the 3.1 branch would have upgraded to a good version by 
> now.

Stop whining; I have already explained this.

> We aren't going to request bash version N+1 as soon as a bug is found in 
> version N. As long as the bug is fixed at some point in bash branch N, 
> that version shouldn't be excluded.
> 
> WRT pipefail, instead of requiring a specific bash version, it would be 
> better to add a test to the configure script. I doubt that every version 
> before 3.2.0 has it wrong and every version since 3.2.0 has it right. As 
> far as I know the feature itself was added in bash 3.0.0 so I would hope 
> that at least some versions between 3.0.0 and 3.1.17 have it properly 
> implemented.

I need at least version 3.0 of bash for pipefail.  Bash 3.0 is from
2004.  Is that okay?

> Also, when you need a specific bash feature for only one optional quilt 
> command (and I consider mail to be optional, many quilt users never need 
> it) then it may make sense to simply exclude the command in question 
> from the build if bash is too old, rather than failing the build 
> altogether.
>
> I know this means some work on the build infrastructure, but 
> this should be considered, as being able to run quilt on old systems is 
> an important feature IMHO.

I'm not interested in implementing or maintaining that kind of backwards
compatibility code, I can live with requiring bash >= 3.0 very well.

Andreas