Re: Problems with handicapped 'bash' from glibc package

[Ludovic Courtès]

Mark H Weaver <address@hidden> skribis:

> The 'bash' in the glibc package is handicapped in at least two ways:
>
> * It can't set the locale, because it looks for locales in
>   /nix/store/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-glibc-intermediate-2.18-locales
>
> * It can't look up anything from NSS, such as passwd data, because it
>   tries to load the modules from
>   /nix/store/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-glibc-intermediate-2.18
>
> There are two problems that need to be addressed, I think:
>
> * Users could easily end up with this handicapped 'bash' as their
>   primary bash, if they installed (or upgraded?) 'glibc' since the last
>   time I installed 'bash'.  This happened to me, for example.
>
> * Some (most?) programs in Guix that launch subprocesses with the shell
>   use this handicapped one.  For example, every time I run 'w3m', it
>   prints two warnings about 'sh' being unable to set the locale.
>
> Any suggestions about how we should address these problems?

Indeed, that’s a problem.

For the record, the handicaped bash comes from the removal of /bin/sh
[0].  It is used by ‘system’ and ‘popen’.

Looks like solving this would require either rewriting glibc references
in the static bash binary (tricky, especially since the glibc directory
names have different lengths currently), or building Bash directly in
the glibc-final derivation so that it refers to the right libc with all
its bells and whistles.

The latter sounds best, but it would require to sort of duplicate the
build recipe of Bash internally.

Another option would be to apply glibc-bootstrap-system.patch
unconditionally, but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.

[0] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2013-01/msg00041.html