[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Because rssh connects to many different kinds of systems, it has to
> deal with heterogeneity in many ways. A few examples:
>
> - On some systems, /bin/sh groks tilde expansion, on others, you
> need /bin/ksh or /usr/bin/ksh.
> - On BSDish systems, `ls' doesn't grok the `-n' option.
>
...
>
> I think there are several options. One option is to define
> meta-commands for all the things needed by rssh.el. One could also
> provide for a way of defining different functions for parsing the
> output of a command. For example, one thing often used by rssh.el is
> to invoke a command then use "echo $?" to get the exit status of the
> command. One could create a more general mechanism for this and one
> could allow the user to select one of a number of different general
> mechanisms like this.
>
> This approach has the disadvantage of requiring the user to know stuff
> about the remote host and to select the right commands and parsing
> functions.
>
> But it seems that not too many things are different between different
> Unix hosts, so it might be possible to just check the capabilities of
> the remote host and to have code in rssh.el which deals with all
> possible cases. An example would be to test the remote /bin/sh
> whether it groks tilde expansion; if not, we search for a ksh or maybe
> a bash and exec that. Another example would be to test the remote ls
> whether it groks `-n'; if not, we see whether the remote end uses NIS
> and fetch the numeric uids from /etc/passwd and/or NIS. And so on.
>
> This second approach does everything automatically, but maybe it
> fails.
>
Having rssh to deal with all different situations is of course
attractive from the user's point of view.
But:
You all know the 95 % rule: Implementing the missing 5 % of
functionality needs another 95 % effort :-(
Back to the details:
What shell is available which groks tilde expansion ?
Does 'ls -n' report UID/GID ?
What about collecting the info for the OS'ses we know about ?
My 2 cent:
Linux (different flavours)
ls -ln works fine
Usually no ksh avail (ksh has to be licensed, is non-free). bash works
fine. Usually no csh avail.
ReliantUnix (SVR4, strictly POSIX)
ls -ln works fine
/bin/sh does _not_ grok tilde expansion
ksh is always available. Dito csh.
Usually no bash avail.
Kind regards
Gerd
