I disagree that anyone messed this up. I don’t know how someone managed to get a non GNU-compatible awk, but I do agree that it should be fixed. While I was at it, I cleaned up the check-that-default-was-changed code.
@codinghorror, please see
https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker/pull/392
I would still like to know under what circumstances you install a non GNU-compatible awk(1), especially on Ubuntu 16.04.