6 ms·

The attraction for me is not about portability, it's about having a better language to write CMD script. Even when you know you have Python available sometimes

• jheriko 10y ago
  > sometimes you still need to glue things together with CMD why? is there something cmd can do that python can't? one example is enough...
  • Karunamon 10y ago
    It's not about can or can't I think. Examples: Language runtime can't be installed, system locked down with deepfreeze, not enough permissions..
    • tmuir 10y ago
      Those aren't normally solved with scripting. However, any language with the ability to issue arbitrary system commands can accomplish everything a command line can.
    • choward 10y ago
      Then how will batsh get installed?
      • ZoF 10y ago
        Isn't the entire premise of batsh that it compiles to bat? Why would you need to install batsh?
  • robertelder 10y ago
    I don't use windows much anymore so there might be a better way to do this, but I'll propose a use case: Automating the installation of python on a fresh machine.
    • choward 10y ago
      How are you going to install batsh though?
      • zem 10y ago
        you don't need to install batsh. you maintain your code in batsh, compile to bat and have that up on your page as a download.
        • somabc 10y ago
          Even if you did distribute bat files online Windows would block downloading or running them by default so they are not a useful method.
        • swsieber 10y ago
          Or, if you have developers, some on Windows and some on *nix, check in the batsh and its outputs.
      • smarx007 10y ago
        You generate bat and sh files during the build, like deb or exe files.
    • xyience 10y ago
      Fresh machine where and for whom? I doubt a simple batch script will get you very far (setup.exe exists for a reason...), and I doubly-doubt you would have enough overlap in the process that something that can convert the steps to bash would be an advantage. The only advantage I see for batsh is that it looks nicer to write in for the tiny subset of batch it supports. But then so is pretty much anything else -- it wouldn't surprise me if someone has already written a DSL in a well known language that can output to batch or powershell, we don't need a whole new language for this.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • 10y ago
  • partiallypro 10y ago
    Who cares if Python can technically do it? If you have a CLI tool based around Bash, why would you want to rewrite it in Python and have to support it yourself and spend those man hours doing it?
    • acchow 10y ago
      Because then you wouldn't have to write in Bash...
      • uranusjr 10y ago
        Or BAT. I can live (reluctantly) with Bash, but Windows batch file is just brutal.
    • nomel 10y ago
      The context of this article and all of these comments is writing new scripts, not rewriting old scripts. If you have a completed script that does everything you want, then none of this applies.
• Consultant32452 10y ago
  These days you probably want Windows Powershell. It's built on the .NET framework so it's pretty darn powerful and AFAIK is available by default on every modern WinOS.
  • deevus 10y ago
    Powershell _is_ great (I help run an OSS project written in Powershell), but it has a long start-up time. If you're doing it as a pre-build step for example, you don't want to add potentially seconds (!) to your build just to use powershell.
    • stinos 10y ago
      Do you use -noprofile? (you probably should for build steps, or else make sure all your build environments have a similar profile to yours) Then the startup time is usually much better - at least I haven't seen it going over some 100s of mSec.
    • ygra 10y ago
      Startup time used to be horrible in Windows 7 (v2, I think), but they improved it a lot since then. It starts instantly for me on my Windows 10 machine here.
  • herbst 10y ago
    Is there a linux or mac build of Powershell? After all this years hearing it is not that bad i would really love to try it a day or two