Z-Shell Frequently-Asked Questions

Chapter 5: The future of zsh

5.1: What bugs are currently known and unfixed? (Plus recent important changes)

Here are some of the more well-known ones, very roughly in decreasing order of significance. Many of these can also be counted against differences from ksh in question 2.1; note that this applies to the latest beta version and that simple bugs are often fixed quite quickly. There is a file Etc/BUGS in the source distribution with more detail.

Note that a few recent changes introduce incompatibilities (these are not bugs):

Changes after zsh 3.0 (3.1.x is still currently in beta):

Changes since zsh 2.5:

5.2: Where do I report bugs, get more info / who's working on zsh?

The shell is being maintained by various (entirely self-appointed) subscribers to the mailing list,

zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu so mail on any issues (bug reports, suggestions, complaints...) related to the development of the shell should be sent there. If you want someone to mail you directly, say so. Most patches to zsh appear there first.

Please note when reporting bugs that many exist only on certain architectures, which the developers may not have access to. In this case debugging information, as detailed as possible, is particularly welcome.

Two progressively lower volume lists exist, one with messages concerning the use of zsh,

zsh-users@math.gatech.edu and one just containing announcements: about releases, about major changes in the shell, or this FAQ, for example, zsh-announce@math.gatech.edu (posting to the last one is currently restricted).

Note that you should only join one of these lists: people on zsh-workers receive all the lists, and people on zsh-users will also receive the announcements list.

The lists are handled by an automated server. The instructions for zsh-announce and zsh-users are the same as for zsh-workers: just change zsh-workers to whatever in the following.

To join zsh-workers, send email to

zsh-workers-request@math.gatech.edu with the subject line (this is a change from the old list) subscribe <your-email-address> e.g. Subject: subscribe P.Stephenson@swansea.ac.uk and you can unsubscribe in the same way. The list maintainer, Richard Coleman, can be reached at
coleman@math.gatech.edu.

The list from May 1992 to May 1995 is archived in ftp://ftp.sterling.com/zsh/zsh-list/YY-MM where YY-MM are the year and month in digits.

Of course, you can also post zsh queries to the Usenet group comp.unix.shell; if all else fails, you could even e-mail me.

5.3: What's on the wish-list?

With version 3, the code is much cleaner than before, but still bears the marks of the ages and many things could be done much better with a rewrite. A more efficient set of code for lexing/parsing/execution might also be an advantage. Volunteers are particularly welcome for these tasks.

An improved line editor, with user-definable functions and binding of multiple functions to keystrokes, is being developed.

Acknowledgments:

Thanks to zsh-list, in particular Bart Schaefer, for suggestions regarding this document. Zsh has been in the hands of archivists Jim Mattson, Bas de Bakker, Richard Coleman and Zoltan Hidvegi, and the mailing list has been run by Peter Gray, Rick Ohnemus and Richard Coleman, all of whom deserve thanks. The world is eternally in the debt of Paul Falstad for inventing zsh in the first place (though the wizzo extended completion is by Sven Wischnowsky).

Copyright Information:

This document is copyright (C) P.W. Stephenson, 1995, 1996, 1997. This text originates in the U.K. and the author asserts his moral rights under the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, and distribute this documentation for any purpose, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies of this documentation. Remember, however, that this document changes monthly and it may be more useful to provide a pointer to it rather than the entire text. A suitable pointer is "information on the Z-shell can be obtained on the World Wide Web at URL http://www.peak.org/zsh/".