Re: [PATCH/RFC] eradicate bashisms in scripts/patch-kernel

[Andreas Mohr <andi@lisas.de>]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 03:24:22PM -0700, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> Andreas Mohr wrote:
> >- the "source" statement most likely needs the ./ prepended, as can be
> >gathered from e.g. http://osdir.com/ml/colinux.devel/2005-12/msg00036.html
> 
> That email isn't very convincing to me.

Actually that place simply was where I found how the

.: 188: .tmpver.eC4856.1: not found

dash error that happened when I replaced the bash-specific "source"
statement with its "." counterpart could be ""fixed"".

> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/dot.html just says 
> that
> if <filename> does not contain a slash, the search PATH shall be used 
> (searched).
> If you want to prevent that, it's OK to use ./, but at least say that in the
> patch description, please.

So this part seems to indicate that merely prepending ./ is problematic,
since ./ implies relative path resolution whereas $TMPFILE.1 could
theoretically be an absolute path already.
It would probably be best to add the ./ to mktemp already, to make sure
we source *exactly* the filename expression we originally mktemp'd.

OTOH prepending ./ to mktemp by default would deny mktemp any
"search for a temporary-capable directory and create the file there"
capabilities. Hmm. I should investigate POSIX shell sourcing
mechanisms more.

> >@@ -202,13 +202,7 @@
> > EXTRAVER=
> > if [ x$EXTRAVERSION != "x" ]
> > then
> >-	if [ ${EXTRAVERSION:0:1} == "." ]; then
> >-		EXTRAVER=${EXTRAVERSION:1}
> >-	else
> >-		EXTRAVER=$EXTRAVERSION
> >-	fi
> >-	EXTRAVER=${EXTRAVER%%[[:punct:]]*}
> >-	#echo "$PNAME: changing EXTRAVERSION from $EXTRAVERSION to $EXTRAVER"
> 
> What's the problem above?

The variable manipulation seems bash-specific, the resulting dash error was:

linux-2.6.23/scripts/patch-kernel: 205: Syntax error: Bad substitution

which pointed at the

	if [ ${EXTRAVERSION:0:1} == "." ]; then

line.

> > 
> >-    SUBLEVEL=$((SUBLEVEL + 1))
> >+    SUBLEVEL=$(( $SUBLEVEL + 1 ))
> 
> Why are the added spaces needed?

They weren't strictly needed, what was needed was to add the missing $ sign
(you could perhaps say that I added the spaces to emphasize the $ sign).
Maybe they're best removed.

> Did you look at
> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/xcu_chap02.html ?

No. I should have started by looking at the opengroup.org site when
looking for POSIX specs...

> 
> >     FULLVERSION="$VERSION.$PATCHLEVEL.$SUBLEVEL"
> >     #echo "#___ trying $FULLVERSION ___"
> > 
> >-    if [ $((SUBLEVEL)) -gt $((STOPSUBLEVEL)) ]; then
> >+    if [ $SUBLEVEL -gt $STOPSUBLEVEL ]; then
> 
> What's the problem here?

I got 

linux-2.6.23/scripts/patch-kernel: 270: arith: syntax error: "SUBLEVEL"

thus I simply removed braces since that "fixed" the issue.
May be incorrect, though...


I'll think a bit more about these couple changed places (and whether
this still truly works as intended) and mail a patch then.

(and a big NOTE: I'm no POSIX vs. non-POSIX shell guru at all, only a
semi-versed shell script writer, thus these changes should be reviewed
quite thoroughly)

Thanks for your very fast review,

Andreas Mohr