[Buildroot] Add [user at host dir] back to skeleton /etc/profile

Luca Ceresoli luca at lucaceresoli.net
Wed Oct 7 08:22:43 UTC 2015


Dear David,

thanks for your report.

[Cc-ing the author and the other reviewer of the mentioned commit]

David Van Arnem wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I noticed there was a commit pushed Saturday (f93c692c) which removed
> some bash-specific stuff from the skeleton shell profile in
> /etc/profile.  The default behavior for the shell prompt now is to only
> display "$" or "#", without the [user at host dir] prefix.  I just
> subscribed to the list today so I missed out on any discussion on this;
> was there a reason the [user at host dir] prefix was not left in the
> changes ("export PS1="[\u@\h \W]\\$ "")?  I have not encountered a Linux
> distribution that does not display this or a similar prompt, and I think
> it would be beneficial to add it back in.  I agree that the aliases,
> colors, etc should stay removed.

This is because bash is rather unusual on embedded Linux systems. At
least on small devices, bash has a farily targe foot print, so in most
cases a simpler shell is used. For example, the default in Buildroot is
to use the 'ash' shell implemented by Busybox.

Comparing with a desktop distribution, if that's what you did, is
misleading. Desktops distributions run on machines with large of disks
and RAMs, and

However it is perfectly fine if you want to use bash on your embedded
system, and that's why Buildroot has a 'bash' package.

Mmh, I realize now it's probably wise if we add back the bash-specific
lines, but in package/bash/bash_profile, and of course install that
file. This would give back bash features to bash users, out of the box,
and without cluttering the rootfs for other users.

Why don't you try to do it yourself, and make your first code
contribution to Buildroot?

Regards,
-- 
Luca


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