Korn Shell 93 integration/migration project at OpenSolaris.org

OpenSolaris Project: Korn Shell 93 integration/migration project

View the leaders for this project
Project Observers

Endorsing communities

OS/Net (ON)

What are we are doing ?

The ksh93-integration project should investigate and execute the integration of the Korn Shell version 93 (ksh93) and related features, including:

Introduction of ksh93 (/usr/bin/nksh and /usr/bin/ksh93 were proposed until /usr/bin/ksh will be updated to ksh93)
Introduction of libshell.so (see below)
Investigate the migration of /usr/bin/ksh to the standard version of ksh93
Investigate changes required for ksh93 to replace the standard POSIX shell /usr/xpg4/bin/sh.
Discussion/bugfixing of Solaris-specific ksh93 bugs+fixes
Enhancement of Solaris tools to use libshell instead of homegrown commandline parsers (like zfs, xauth etc.)
Ensure backwards compatibility (for example via keeping the old version of Solaris ksh around as /usr/bin/oksh)
Replacement of duplicate ksh versions in various Sun products with libshell.so (which is ksh93 as a shared library), including dbx and dtksh

Why are we doing this ?

Because customers have been asking for it for years
Customers have requested ksh93 integration and ksh93 features in Solaris for many years. RFEs supporting this including 4113420, 6332421, 1215363, 4201349, 4448701, 4827484, 4877415, 5034853 etc.)
Lower the maintaince burden of Sun engineers by delivering an almost unmodified version of ksh93 instead of the current /bin/ksh codebase which is highly Solaris-specific
Lower the burden of developers and site adminstrators and improve interoperability between versions of Unix via upgrading /bin/ksh to ksh93 level
Provide a unified shell parser backend (libshell.so) for existing value-add (dbx/dtksh/tksh) and other Solaris components such as zfs.
Improve the user-friendliness for ksh users, via enhancements of editing modes, history, builtins etc

Phase I, the integration of ksh93 as /usr/bin/ksh93 has been completed; ksh93 is now available as /usr/bin/ksh93 in Solaris ≥ build 72.
We're currently working on Phase II which will provide additional features (like the shell script compiler shcomp), improvements and bugfixes.

Filing bugs/RFEs

Submit a bug or RFE or view the list of open bugs.

Screenshots

(More screenshots can be found on the Screenshots page)

References/Links

OpenSolaris shell project
[http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/shell/]
KornShell home page
[http://www.kornshell.com/]
PSARC 2006/550 "Korn Shell 93 Integration"
[http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/caselog/2006/550/]
PSARC 2006/587 "/etc/ksh.kshrc for ksh93"
[http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/caselog/2006/587/]
PSARC 2007/035 "ksh93 Amendments"
[http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/caselog/2007/035/]
POSIX sh(1) manual page
[http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/sh.html]
POSIX Shell Command Language
[http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/xcu_chap02.html]
Article: "The New Korn Shell - ksh93"
by David G. Korn, Charles J. Northrup, and Jeffery Korn
[http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jlk/lj/]
Article: "Overview of the OpenSolaris Korn Shell 93 Integration Project"
by Roland Mainz
[http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/ksh93-integration/osdevconf2007/osoldevconf2007_ksh93_talk_version100.html]

Announcements

08 Feb 2008	ksh93s+ (ast-ksh.2008-02-02) is out
28 Jan 2008	Indiana preview2 ships ksh93 as /usr/bin/sh+/sbin/sh
06 Dec 2007	Prototype XML/SAX parsing support for ksh93
09 Nov 2007	AT&T ksh93s+ 2007-11-05 released
08 Nov 2007	2007-11-05: ksh93 _update tarballs_ for OpenSolaris >= B72
02 Nov 2007	New ksh93s+ 2007-10-31 beta source tarballs
31 Oct 2007	Online copy of "Learning the Korn Shell, 2nd edition"
31 Oct 2007	ksh93-integration 2007-10-31 binary tarballs for Nevada >= B61 and <= B71 available
29 Sep 2007	OpenSolaris.org ksh93 documentation updated
24 Sep 2007	New ksh93s+ 2007-09-22 beta source tarballs

OpenSolaris