[Bio-linux-dev] bash compatibility

[Tony Travis]

On 04/02/15 18:16, Tim Booth wrote:
> Hi Tony,
>
>> Winning hearts and minds to use
>> Bio-Linux is more difficult if you tell people they can't use "bash".
>
> For the millionth time, Bash is fully supported in Bio-Linux, which you
> know full well because you use it yourself.  But no it isn't the default
> and no I'm not going to make it the default and no I'm not going to
> re-write all my documentation to reference Bash.  What you choose to
> teach is up to you.

Hi, Tim.

Ouch! - That's me told.

Clearly, I wasn't listening the 999,999 times you told me before :-)

However, as I said, we are going to teach "zsh" for the course in Assam
precisely because we want to make use of your comprehensive tutorial.

> The only person dictating shell compatibility here is you, by having
> some nasty mis-designed software that depends on the user's selection of
> login shell and then when it doesn't work you say it's the system's
> fault.  It's not, and if you tried to submit the software to Debian as a
> package they'd rightly tell you the package was buggy.  I will not be
> adding your "fix" to Bio-Linux.  Fix your software!

I just requested that we do something that other "zsh" users do to
increase compatibility of "zsh" with the widely-used /etc/profile.d
directory for "bash". I'm sorry if you think I'm dictating everyone
should use "bash" because I'm not. I'm seeking a way of using either
"zsh" or "bash" with the same global configuration environment and I
don't think I'm alone in seeking that. I think I might be forgiven for
thinking that you agreed with me from your Debian bug report:

> From: Tim Booth <tbooth at ceh.ac.uk>
> To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit at bugs.debian.org>
> Subject: zsh-common: Wish for /etc/zsh/zprofile.d or equivalent
> Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2015 18:25:21 +0000
>
> Package: zsh-common
> Version: 5.0.2-3ubuntu6
> Severity: wishlist
>
> This is a request on behalf of Bio-Linux and the Debian Med developers.
> The attached file shows the zshrc used on Bio-Linux, and the part we'd really
> like to see in the standard zsh-common package is support for a zprofile.d configuration
> directory to mirror /etc/profile.d which is read by BASH and allows
> packages to drop config fragments into the shell profile.
>
> In Bio-Linux this is hooked from zshrc but actually a modified zprofile
> probably makes more sense.
>
> This is pretty trivial to implement, as far as I can see.  What do you think?
>
> Cheers,
>
> TIM

Thanks for all the work you've done updating your tutorial!

  Tony.

--
Dr. A.J.Travis, University of Aberdeen, Institute of Biological and
Environmental Sciences, Cruickshank Building, St. Machar Drive, Aberdeen
AB24 3UU, Scotland, UK. tel +44(0)1224 272700, fax +44 (0)1224 272 396
http://www.abdn.ac.uk, mailto:tony.travis at abdn.ac.uk, skype:ajtravis


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