Install Bash by running the following commands:
./configure --enable-static-link --prefix=$LFS/usr \
--bindir=$LFS/bin --with-curses &&
make &&
make install &&
cd $LFS/bin &&
ln -s bash sh
If you get errors when compiling bash that tell about not being able to find "-lcurses", these two commands should be run to create the missing symlink:
Note: Normally, the libncurses.a file resides in the /usr/lib directory but it might reside in /lib (like it does on LFS systems). Check this first and adjust the path in the following commands accordingly:
cd /usr/lib &&
ln -s libncurses.a libcurses.a
--enable-static-link: This configure option causes Bash to be linked statically
--prefix=$LFS/usr: This configure option installs all of Bash's files under the $LFS/usr directory, which becomes the /usr directory after the user chroot'ed into $LFS or when he rebooted the system into LFS.
--bindir=$LFS/bin: This installs the executable files in $LFS/bin. We do this because we want bash to be in /bin, not in /usr/bin. One reason being: the /usr partition might be on a separate partition which has to be mounted at some point. Before that partition is mounted a user needs and will want to have bash available (it will be hard to execute the boot scripts without a shell for instance).
--with-curses: This causes Bash to be linked against the curses library instead of the default termcap library which is becoming obsolete.
ln -s bash sh: This command creates the sh symlink that points to bash. Most scripts run themselves via 'sh' (invoked by the #!/bin/sh as the first line in the scripts) which invokes a special bash mode. Bash will then behave (as closely as possible) as the original Bourne shell.
The &&'s at the end of every line cause the next command to be executed only if the previous command exists with a return value of 0 indicating success. In case all of these commands are copy&pasted on the shell, is is important to be ensured that if ./configure fails, make isn't being executed and, likewise, if make fails, that make install isn't being executed, and so forth.
The Bash package contains the bash program
Bash is the Bourne-Again SHell, which is a widely used command interpreter on Unix systems. Bash is a program that reads from standard input, the keyboard. A user types something and the program will evaluate what he has typed and do something with it, like running a program.