Dear Tom,
In message 20210706145420.GQ9516@bill-the-cat you wrote:
Updating to a current version would fix this, in an almost 100% backward compatible way.
Let us cut to the chase then. Who is going to port a modern version of hush over to U-Boot, and maintain it? If we fork and forget again, we'll be in a bad place once again in 2-3 years.
Would we really be better off if we switch to some exotic piece of code instead (I was not able to locate any user base, nor other developers), which has been reported to have poor or no error handling, and comes with an incompatible command line interface?
There is a zillion of shell scripts in the field, from non-trivial boot sequences to complex download-and-upgrade scripts. You can't really even think of breaking compatibility on such a level.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk