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Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2022 08:49:12 +0200
Message-Id: <CL39OD3Z6006.3RFEUDFZFQVH1@sumire>
Cc: 
Subject: Re: Fixing shell script libraries like /lib/libalpine.sh
From: "alice" <alice@ayaya.dev>
To: "Daniel F. Dickinson" <dfdpublic@wildtechgarden.ca>,
 <~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org>
References: <4caa8c5f-7ebf-ad2f-0e92-29428785fe60@wildtechgarden.ca>
In-Reply-To: <4caa8c5f-7ebf-ad2f-0e92-29428785fe60@wildtechgarden.ca>

On Thu Jun 30, 2022 at 8:16 AM CEST, Daniel F. Dickinson wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've noticed some issues with the Alpine shell script libraries (one
> example below)[1]
>
> I'm new to Alpine but not to Linux, *BSD, or (way back) Ultrix, and have
> not (yet) dug into the Alpine code base and infrastructure. (Although I
> have my 'notes-to-self' documentation[2] that I intend (RSN...) to
> integrate into the Wiki and have published on my website).
>
> My questions with respect to the issues mentioned are:
>
> 1. Do you prefer the GitLab merge request interface or the mailing list
> for patches?[3]
merge requests on gitlab are highly preferred- our mailing list
integration is only into aports (package repository), and quite scuffed
as it opens a new merge request and requires a new email for any
changes..
>
> 2. If you are not already using tools like shellcheck / shellfmt and or
> shell unit tests in your CI, do you have objections to such being added?
tests are extremely welcome. we write ours (now) in kyua+atf, and
libalpine.sh comes from alpine-conf, see
https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/alpine-conf/
and the tests that are already there (and where you should report any
issues that you have now, it seems).

as for shellcheck i think that would be welcome, but shellcheck has a
ton of very useless lints.. an opt-in only list of rules would most
likely work, but you'd have to ask the maintainer.
>
> I'm hoping to spend some time fixing this type of issue as they result
> in annoying hiccups when trying to automate setup-alpine, and I'd like
> that to work well.
>
> A final note: I've got some cloud-init image creation using Packer that
> I soon intend to push to public repository, along with Terraform usage
> of the same; is there interest in those here? I almost forgot; what is
> the status the work on the 'tiny' cloud-init substitute or other
> alternatives in Alpine?
>
> Regards,
>
> Daniel
>
>
> [1]:
>
> # test the first argument against the remaining ones, return success on
> a match
> isin() {
> =C2=A0=C2=A0 =C2=A0local _a=3D$1 _b
> =C2=A0=C2=A0 =C2=A0shift
> =C2=A0=C2=A0 =C2=A0for _b; do
> =C2=A0=C2=A0 =C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 [ "$_a" =3D "$_b" ] && return 0
> =C2=A0=C2=A0 =C2=A0done
> =C2=A0=C2=A0 =C2=A0return 1
> }
>
> _b is never assigned a value. This is why automating ntp setup fails
> (specifically the following code in /sbin/setup-ntp) will never skip the
> 'ask':
>
> while [ $# -eq 0 ] && ! isin "$resp" busybox openntpd chrony none abort; =
do
> =C2=A0=C2=A0 =C2=A0ask "Which NTP client to run? ('busybox', 'openntpd', =
'chrony' or
> 'none')" chrony
> done
>
> [2]: https://wildtechgarden.ca/deploy-admin/server-alpine-linux-docs4web/
>
> [3]: I've been off in frontend-land for a while and am somewhat out of
> sync with current systems development preferences.
>
> Speaking of which, I don't see at
> https://useplaintext.email/#thunderbird how to limit the line length to
> 72 characters as requested (or is this unnecessary due to things
> Thunderbird does in background when sending plaintext?).
seems to be wrapped correctly to me, and the entire email is plaintext
and perfectly formatted.
>
> I unfortunately need features of Thunderbird that aren't available in
> what I preferred in the days before MS 365 and Gmail were what most of
> the folks I needed to communicate with dependent on, which was Claws Mail=
.
>
> --=20
>
> https://wildtechgarden.ca Technical and professional website
> https://princesandmadmen.ca Personal and political blog