On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Robert Nesius <nesius at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 7:07 PM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> ...and I'm noticing that "history -a file" does not do anything if I wrote
>> previously with "history -w file".  I think this is a very serious bug that
>> could cause loss of an important command history.
>>
>> I see here that it has been fixed in bash 4.2 release candidate 2...
>>
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.bash.bug/browse_thread/thread/48152c5e8c35b743?pli=1
>>
>> ...but I'm still on 4.0.33 on my main box.  It gets worse.  Here are two
>> other boxes that I use a lot:
>>
>>
>> How many years will pass before I get the bug fix?  With CentOS I'll
>> probably die first.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>
> Hi Mike,
>
> bash is pretty easy to build.  I'm sure you could crank out a personal
> version and set your shell to use it instead (or exec your personel version
> during the login phase) in a blink.  I'd probably just symlink to my
> personal copy until the distro finally caught up and then replace the
> symlink with the old binary before doing the update.  (That's me - there are
> probably better ways to do it, like changing your default shell in
> /etc/passwd)...
>
> The whole point of Open Source was, in part, to facillitate collaboration
> and to enable people to get bug fixes as soon as they are fixed.  If you
> want to wait on a productized distro to eventually get around to it, that's
> your business.  But it's not their fault for not jumping on an issue as as
> quickly as you'd like.  Unless you're paying them and they've violated an
> SLA you paid money for them to abide by.
>
> wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/bash/<the_one_you_want>.tar.gz
> tar -xzf bash*gz
> cd bash*
> ./configure --prefix=$HOME/bin
> make
> make install
>
> configure your system to get the new shell as you like.  Make sure you have
> libreadline and its headers along with build-essentials (i.e., a working
> compiler).   You might need a few other libs too but libreadline is the big
> one for bash.
>
> Also, I always do a ./configure --help and review flags for functionality I
> need to flip at compile time before running the full configure.  And, of
> course, it's never a bad idea to check the signatures of the files you
> download before compiling them - especially if root is going to run your
> shell.  :)
>
> -Rob
>

Whoops.  I'm getting rusty.

wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/bash/gnu/the_one_you_want.tar.gz

Aaaaand.... bash 4.2 hasn't been released yet, and unlike a lot of projects
apparently the bash source is not fully visible per this interesting thread:


http://www.mail-archive.com/bug-bash@gnu.org/msg06351.html

Allegedly the bash source is visible on Savannah but I'm not sure how
current it is.  The point being... the bash owner hasn't even provided a
release for people to pull and deploy yet.  I think you're being a bit harsh
on CentOS. ;-)

-Rob
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