Arch Linux

Gregory_M

Member

Registered: 2024-11-30

Posts: 21

Is "bash" Required to be Installed?

This article discusses dash as bin/sh:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dash#U … as_/bin/sh

Does this mean that "bash" is not needed. (I have another post about use of makepkg with other shells.)

Last edited by Gregory_M (2025-07-13 11:07:38)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 12,931

Re: Is "bash" Required to be Installed?

It's not just makepkg, pacman itself uses bash, so yeah, it's required on an Arch system, regardless of what /bin/sh is.

Last edited by Scimmia (2025-07-13 11:34:56)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 66,527

Re: Is "bash" Required to be Installed?

x-ref, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=306946
Also pretty obviously an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem - what's the point of your inquiries?

To add to Scimmia's answer: bash, zsh and dash (and even the busybox ash) can function as POSIX /bin/sh, but if a script shebangs /bin/bash or /bin/zsh you can expect it to be full of bashisms and zshisms which are mutually not compatible (and certainly not covered by the "simpler" shells)
Als nb. that even though zsh largely overlaps w/ bash what might lure you into thinking that you could just symlink /bin/bash to /bin/zsh, there's a super-mean trap because array indexes start at 1 resp. 0 (and some other but more fringe diverging details)

tl;dr: you *need* bash, you *want* zsh and there's almost no point in an additional dash anymore since bash constrains to POSIX and runs much leaner when invoked as /bin/sh.

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