Subject: [bug#57050] [PATCH v2 04/13] gnu: Add Zuo.

From: "Philip McGrath" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2022 19:24:57 -0400

On Tue, Aug 23, 2022, at 5:11 AM, Maxime Devos wrote:
> On 23-08-2022 03:40, Philip McGrath wrote:
>
>> More generally, it seems questionable for our glibc to retain a store reference to Bash (let alone two). Wouldn't that prevent creating containers or packs without a shell present?
>
> glibc needs to retain a reference to a shell for the 'system' function 
> to work.
>
> I don't see what containers or packs have to do with anything, it's the 
> same for profiles in general.
>

Without involving Guix, it's possible to create a chroot, container, or various other kinds of environments where a shell is not present. Inside such an environment, the 'system' function "works" by returning 0 if the command is NULL, 127 otherwise.

AFAICT, even when Guix creates a container or otherwise isolated environment, any program linking to glibc pulls along Bash. (Indeed, two different versions of Bash!)

-Philip