[Bug 930806] Re: Ubuntu 11.10: The dash command is softlinked to /bin/sh.

[Marcel Stimberg]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
Ubuntu better.

Dash is a POSIX compliant shell that is supposed to be more efficient
than bash. For that reason, Ubuntu introduced /bin/sh as a symlink to
dash back in Ubuntu 6.10: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh

Every shell script that uses bash specific features should declare "#! /bin/bash" instead, or fix the "bashisms", the above mentioned link has a lot of advise on that. For a makefile, an easy fix is to set 
SHELL = /bin/bash
at the beginning of it. 

Finally, if you want to disable the symlink on your system, you can run
"sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash" and chose not to set this symlink.

** Changed in: dash (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Invalid

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/930806

Title:
  Ubuntu 11.10: The dash command is softlinked to /bin/sh.

Status in “dash” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  The dash command is softlinked to /bin/sh.

  Unfortunately, this does not play well with make. The default shell that
  make uses  is /bin/sh. This does not play well with certain makefiles.

  For example, sage Makefile has a target "test" with a shell line

          .  local/bin/sage-env && sage-maketest

  The ". local/bin/sage-env" part of the line creates problems.

  A workaround is to run make as follows:

  env SHELL=/bin/bash make test.

  Do you have to soft-link /bin/sh with dash? Is "dash" posit compliant
  bourne shell?

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