[6273] in Release_7.7_team
The bash transition
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Mon Mar 9 14:30:45 2009
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From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@mit.edu
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Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 14:30:39 -0400
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By the end of the month, I'll be asking Garry to default new accounts
to bash. We've been updating documentation to deal with this, and in
doing that, I've noticed that we've removed a lot of customizations to
our bash config between Athena 9 and Debathena. The stated goal of
this was to bring things in line more with a default Ubuntu
environment. However, we now have skew between the default tcsh and
bash configurations. I realize that in 4 years, many tcsh users will
have vanished due to attrition, but that's still 4 years away.
I think we've decided that we don't want to change people's shells out
from under them. However, I'm beginning to wonder if we want to
publicize the bash transition and actively encourage existing tcsh
users to migrate. I'm not sure about the best way to target the
audience in question, but I think we could easily create a document
about migrating to bash, and its implications, and also a "checklist"
for the migration. I'm not too concerned about the documentation
side, but I'm wondering if people think this would be a worthwhile
effort, or if we should simply wait four years. It seems that the
world hates tcsh at this point, and I'm concerned that if we continue
to try and support tcsh, we'll end up where we are with lprng vs cups
issue. I'm not suggesting we abandon existing Athena tcsh users, but
I wonder if drastically reducing their number will benefit us in the
long run, or simply make more work for us now. I'd be interested in
hearing people's thoughts on this.
Additionally, I wonder if we should bump ~/.generation, so we can
identify tcsh users who actively chose it as opposed to those who have
it because it was the old default. I'm not yet sure when such a case
would be useful, but this is a significant change, and the overhead
involved in bumping ~/.generation is minimal, so unless there's a
really good reason not to, I'd like to do that.
-Jon
