Is there a way to download the presumably initial bash source bash-0.99?

Question

I am interested to check which features the oldest public bash source implements.

Is there a way to download this from the net? Google does not help to find anything from before bash-1.14.7.

Answer 1

See this list at BashFAQ/061 which provides some information about early version of Bash:

• bash-1.14

  1994-06-02

  Can be found at the archived version of http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/

• bash-1.13

  1993-09-03

  Looks like Chet Ramey takes over as maintainer between 1.12 and 1.13.

• bash-1.12

  1992-01-26

  You can find bash-1.12.lx file at oldlinux.org.

• bash-1.11

  1992-01-10

  You can find bash-1.11 at oldlinux.org.

• bash-1.10

  First mention found at 1991-10-07, so some time before that.

• bash-1.09

  First mention found at 1991-06-02.

• bash-1.08

  1991-05-22

• bash-1.07

  likely 1991-02-01

• bash-1.06

  This is a tough one. There was apparently a "bootleg" version of 1.06, so this requires more digging.

• bash-1.05

  1990-03-03

  You can find bash-1.05.tar file at oldlinux.org.

  Also find this copy of origin bash-1.05 at GitHub.

• bash-1.04

  First mention found at 1989-11-07

• bash-1.03

  1989-09-02

  Also check this comment from Brian:

  I didn't post patches right away, which had indeed been my intent. Since then I have completed a major rewrite of the readline library, and the patches would be meaningless. I tend to be slow to release a piece of software unless I think it is perfect. Since I know that Bash is not yet perfect, I am slow to release it. Then, people yell at me to release something, anything, and I rush to get in the last new feature.

• bash-1.02

  First mention found at 1989-07-09.

  You can find bash102.taz at the archived version of decuslib.com

• bash-1.01

  1989-06-23

• bash-1.00

  Hard to search for ...

  As per this Brian's Fox post titled Bash-1.00.tar.Z posted on 1989-06-23:

  I have placed the full source to bash version 1.01 on prep.ai.mit.edu.

  There will not be another release of the shell until all of the known and reported bugs are fixed.

  So we can assume that the earliest bash version has been uploaded to the above website. There are also these mirror sites.

• bash-0.99

  First mention found at 1989-06-11

However I don't think Bash 0.99 has been anywhere released as per Brian's comment:

The documentation is too incomplete to ship with the shell at this time, so I haven't placed it in the release.

You can only check random diff changes by looking at gnu.bash.bug forum or some old posts from the original author (Brian Fox).