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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.telstra.net!psgrain!iafrica.com!uct.uni.net.za!csir.uni.net.za!wits.uni.net.za!howland.erols.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!uunet!in3.uu.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!somsky From: somsky@dirac.phys.washington.edu (William R. Somsky) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: shells Date: 14 Feb 1997 00:51:37 GMT Organization: University of Washington Lines: 82 Message-ID: <5e0cup$q8f@nntp1.u.washington.edu> References: <5dum9s$e1o@newsgate.duke.edu> <5dviec$32l@cicsun.univ-bpclermont.fr> NNTP-Posting-Host: dirac.phys.washington.edu Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:35557 In article <5dum9s$e1o@newsgate.duke.edu>, Cameron Lampley <cgl@acpub.duke.edu> wrote: > > Why in God's name are there no decent shells included in the > standard FreeBSD distribution. What idiot would use csh or sh. > Everybody knows it all bash and tcsh these days. > > Of course > getting the port is simple enough, but even that is very painful > with no command history and no filename completion. Ha, csh > what kind of shit is that. Get with the program FreeBSD. And in article <5dviec$32l@cicsun.univ-bpclermont.fr>, Roger Espel Llima <espel@llaic.univ-bpclermont.fr> replied: > > I don't feel, uhm, as strongly as you do, but I generally agree. bash, > zsh and tcsh should probably be "part of the system", as should perl 5 > rather than 4 (it's been out for years, boys). They're there as ports and packages. And when you do the installation, even before it finishes, there's a bit where you can pick additional things to have installed, including -- believe it or not -- shells! I like tcsh myself, and when I installed FreeBSD, I had it install tcsh immediatly at the same time. You can't get much easier than that. In fact, the only thing that would be easier would be for it to _always_ install tcsh. But if you do it for tcsh, you'd get argued into doing it for bash and zsh, and since I don't use them on my system, I don't want them on _my_ system. And if you start having tcsh, bash and zch added by default, then someone'll say we need to have installed by default: foosh, barsh, thissh, thatsh, etc... And then, tk/tcl, and tex, and xdvi, and xpaint, and ... _and_ ... _AND_ ... _*AND*_ ... You start down that slippery slope where the default distribution installs every possible package by default and you need a 9 GB disk to install it in. I _really_ don't think that's where we need to go. All these packages already come w/ the FreeBSD distribution on CD, and it's _very_ easy and straightforward to ask the installation process to install them for you at the time of installation. (Although, I'll mention this -- at one time, I did try to install a whole _huge_ handful of things, perhaps twenty or so, at initial installation time and it seemed like something got messed up in package installation, I don't remember exactly... I have done it with just a few installed at install time, like tcsh.) And, if you install an extra shell, like tcsh, at installation time, that shell is already available -- if I remember right -- for when you add yourself as the first user of the system near the end of the installation process. Like I said, you can't get much easier than this. Perhaps it could stand for a little more documentation & visibility of how to do this during installation or after by rerunning install, but I dunno, it looked pretty obvioius to me when I ran it the first time. I mean, if I remember right, it gives you a menu and explicitly _asks_ you if you want to add any of these available extra packages at this time. Oh, and what if you're _not_ using the CD, but downloading it? Well, yes, then it would be easier if tcsh was part of the basic setup rather than an add on package. But if you're downloading it, would you also want to spend the time waiting for the included bash and zsh and ... and ... and ... and ... that would also be part of the basic package to download before you could actually install the thing? Sorry if I've rambled a bit, but it's been a long day. However I did want to add by input on this. What I think we need with FreeBSD is a base core that's fairly lean-and-mean, but that has the neccesary bit to _easily_ add any additional stuff you want. And I think we've pretty much got this. Perhaps it needs some tuning and maybe a little more documentation/publicity so people installing things for the first time can cleanly and easily use it (rather than ending up with a "now you tell me" scenario), but I think we've basically got it now. ________________________________________________________________________ William R. Somsky somsky@phys.washington.edu Department of Physics, Box 351560 B432 Physics-Astro Bldg Univ. of Washington, Seattle WA 98195-1560 206/616-2954