[Openmcl-devel] CCL startup script (ccl & ccl64) is not Bourne Shell compatible

[Waldek Hebisch]

Chun Tian wrote:
> Hi, Clozure team
> 
> CCL's startup script (ccl & ccl64) cannot run correctly under Solaris  
> 10, because this two scripts is NOT Bourne Shell compatible and have  
> #!/bin/sh as their first line. The problem is in following lines:
> 
> if [ -z "$CCL_DEFAULT_DIRECTORY"  -a  -n "`which readlink`" ]; then
>      dir="`readlink $0`"
>      probe "${dir%/scripts/ccl64}"
> fi
> 
> Here, the syntax "${dir%/scripts/ccl64}" is only support in GNU bash  
> (Bourne Again Shell) but original "sh". Today, almost every OS have "/ 
> bin/sh" link to "/bin/bash" so that most users didn't notice this  
> issue. But Solaris 10 still use the original "/bin/sh" which lack of  
> support of that usage on shell variables.
>

The last paragraph is misleading: the "${dir%/scripts/ccl64}" construct
is in Posix shell specifiaction.  It works on most Unix systems
simply because vensors ship standard compilant shells.   Solaris
ships pre-standard Bourne shell, so it does not work.  Advice to
require 'bash' goes in wrong direction -- several systems have
different shell as '/bin/sh' and do not ship bash in default
setup.  So using 'bash' is likely to break several other systems.

AFAICS on Solaris correct fix is to replace '/bin/sh' by
'/bin/posix/sh'.

-- 
                              Waldek Hebisch
hebisch at math.uni.wroc.pl