Re: [PATCH v2 5/8] builtins/source: parse the -i option

[Lawrence Velázquez]

On Sat, May 18, 2024, at 11:17 AM, Phi Debian wrote:
> I am xing fingers the consensus, if any of theses takes off,
> is to have [...] protection against alias source='source -i'

This seems out of scope, regardless of what happens with "-i".


> I really depend on actual 'source' behavior, and can't update my packages
> (distributed since long). I don't plan to use BASH_SOURCE_PATH, so if one,
> distro, sysadmin, and ultimatly the user fiddle with BASH_SOURCE_PATH in
> the ENV (*rc files), changing the good'ol 'source' behavior, it would be a
> serious regression to me.

A reasonable concern, but distros, sysadmins, and users can already
break your scripts in plenty of ways -- changing existing shell
variables, setting shopts your scripts don't account for, etc.


> So to me BASH_SOURCE_PATH enablement must be guarded by a never used yet
> option to 'source or dot' (here -i apparently) and an enforcement that no
> alias source='source -i' could ever be possible.

By this logic, ALL future shell variables ought to be gated similarly.
No doubt some would embrace this, but it seems a bit heavy-handed.


> All this is because one writing a 'main' script (#!/bin/bash), sourcing a
> package of mine through my package management system, expecting the current
> source behavior, and later add the loading of a 'libraries' from a friend
> (terminal color jazz) that in turn start to mess around with alias
> source='source -i' and BASH_SOURCE_PATH cold start to break my way of
> finding my packages.

There's only so much you or bash itself can do to prevent users
from breaking their own setups.

Note that "source -i" precludes a sort of mirror situation.  Someone
who sourced scripts via PATH but wanted to switch to BASH_SOURCE_PATH
would not be able to simply move the relevant directories from one
variable to the other but would have to modify all sourcing scripts
-- including third-party ones -- to use "source -i".  If they
declined to do this, then they'd have to keep using PATH for at
least some scripts, possibly indefinitely.


-- 
vq