Re: [CFT] Shell functionization patch (if you don't know what that means, it's faster Autoconf and leaner configure scripts)

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Paolo Bonzini wrote on Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 09:18:30AM CEST:
> 
> > [...] you will want to put something like
> >   $as_debug
> > 
> > at the start of each function (either being empty, or 'set -x'), for
> > ksh.
> 
> Do you want to put that in AS_REQUIRE_SHELL_FN?  It's fine by me.

I'd love to.  However:
- either this is a totally undocumented interface, in which case the
desire to have it should come from maintenance need,
- or it aims to be documented eventually; in that case, there is the
need to deal with potential breakage resulting from
  set -x
  $command >$log 2>&1
  $evaluate $log

compare the hoops Autotest goes through for this.

> > So, whenever you expand (or eval) arbitrary text into a shell function,
> > there is a potential problem.
> 
> But it is not arbitrary text.  See my message in the other thread.
> 
> > I'm not quite sure how prevalent systems with this zsh are (but probably
> > still too common to completely ignore them).  Even when we can ignore
> > them, the script header should be sure to error out for such systems
> > (because the corruption is silent, and hard to detect).
> 
> ... and in fact IIRC this shell will be ignored by the better-shell loop
> because it fails one of the tests; I think it is as_func_failure:

Indeed.

Thanks,
Ralf