gnu-getopt versus getopt(1)

[dadoug]

Which should be used for maximum portability? What changes need to be made in the code to allow better portability?

[ruimarinho]

From what I've read, FreeBSD ships with getopt(1) which is considered broken in many ways and it is advised not to be used. There is also the POSIX getopts with the disadvantage of only handling short options. On SO there are several threads about bash-only argument parsing scripts that avoid the gnu-getopt (enhanced getopt) vs gnuopt(1) dilemma. The solutions are hackery but appear to work.