Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] meson: prefer shell at "/bin/sh"

From: "brian m. carlson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2025 20:13:01 +0000

On 2025-04-25 at 14:11:29, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> Meson detects the path of the target shell via `find_program("sh")`,
> which essentially does a lookup via `PATH`. This may easily lead to a
> subtly-broken Git distribution when the build host has its shell in a
> location that the target host doesn't know about.
> 
> Fix the issue by appending "/bin" to the custom program path, which
> causes us to prefer "/bin/sh" over a `PATH`-based lookup. While
> "/bin/sh" isn't standardized, this path tends to work alright on Linux
> and BSD distributions. Furthermore, "/bin/sh" is also the path we pick
> in our Makefile by default, which further demonstrates that this shell
> fulfills our needs.

I think this description is much better, thanks.  I agree that choosing
`/bin/sh` is the right thing to do on Linux and the BSDs, even on
usr-merged systems (where `/bin` is always a symlink to `/usr/bin`).
-- 
brian m. carlson (they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA