Subject: Re: [PATCH] tests: avoid syntax triggering old dash bug

From: Torsten Bögershausen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2018 08:06:18 +0100

On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 01:47:41AM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 05:42:53PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> > Avoid a bug in dash that's been fixed ever since its
> > ec2c84d ("[PARSER] Fix clobbering of checkkwd", 2011-03-15)[1] first
> > released with dash v0.5.7 in July 2011.
> > 
> > This fixes 1/2 tests failing on Debian Lenny & Squeeze. The other
> > failure is due to 1b42f45255 ("git-svn: apply "svn.pathnameencoding"
> > before URL encoding", 2016-02-09).
> 
> Are people still using such versions of Debian?  I only see wheezy (7)
> on the mirrors, not squeeze (6) or lenny (5).  It might be better for us
> to encourage users to upgrade to an OS that has security support rather
> than work around bugs in obsolete OSes.

Yes, I have an old PowerPC box to test if code handle endians right.
And to ask people to upgrade does not conflict with supporting older
versions (if that is as easy as this patch).
I think we can have both.