Subject: Re: bug#17156: [PATCH 2/5] Revert conversion to shell scripts

From: Paolo Bonzini <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 15:02:59 -0400

Il 05/04/2014 18:57, Paul Eggert ha scritto:
> Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>> I'm not sure how this is not satisfied by the current code though.
>
> I assume "current code" refers to the code that had egrep and fgrep
> executables (not shell scripts), i.e., commit d25bebd (2005-11-09)
> through commit 0995fc1 (2014-03-23).
>
> Here's an example of why that approach made maintenance tricky.  When
> Norihiro changed fgrep to use the grep matcher (see Bug#16823), his
> patch would have broken fgrep -i due to code in main.c that did a STREQ
> (matcher, "fgrep") to see whether fixed matching was in effect -- this
> was incorrect when the executable was 'fgrep'.  I vaguely recall some
> other subtle bugs in the area and it was enough for me to throw up my
> hands and say "let's go back to the old way of doing things -- that's
> easier to maintain and more reliable".

Ok, I can see this.  I'll try to clean it up.  In the meanwhile, I'd 
rather not have a release with the shell scripts until we have made up 
our mind---in order to avoid reverting it again soon.

Paolo