4 ms·

Hi, author of Upterm here. Ask me anything.

by shockone 9y ago

coppolaemilio 9y ago
Windows version soon? :)
- teekert 9y ago
  One that easily uses Bash on Ubuntu on Windows??
  - Diti 9y ago
    The actual term is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
    - teekert 9y ago
      I'm hearing many terms for it (https://www.google.nl/search?q=bash+on+ubuntu+on+windows&client=firefox-b&dcr=0&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI0LyasrbWAhWFaVAKHURrD7wQ_AUICygC&biw=1680&bih=980#imgrc=iMINvYbTR09F4M: https://www.google.nl/search?q=bash+on+ubuntu+on+windows&cli...)
- shockone 9y ago
  I'm afraid it's not going to happen any time soon, if at all. But even if it does happen, it won't be cmd.exe or PowerShell support, but rather some kind of POSIX shell for Windows.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rwmj 9y ago
Almost all my terminals are ssh'd into some remote machine. Do you still get the features like enhanced command line completion in this scenario? What about integrated screen/some other kind of reconnection?
- shockone 9y ago
  It's theoretically possible to have all the Upterm niceties over SSH, but not possible at the moment. As of screen and tmux, we have no plans to integrate with them.
joantune 9y ago
Autocompletion for env variables is great: i.e. `cd $THAT_ENV_DIRECTORY` however I always get `The directory "$THAT_ENV_DIRECTORY" doesn't exist. ` although clearly it does as it is autocompletion suggested
- shockone 9y ago
  It's a known bug, please vote to fix it faster. Variables interpolation doesn't work in built-in commands at the moment. https://github.com/railsware/upterm/issues/597 https://github.com/railsware/upterm/issues/597
grizzles 9y ago
I made a superficially similar thing but I've never released it. My differences: (1) The shell is in pure js. It's a thin wrapper around shelljs but I had plans to move to a builder type syntax, eg. fs.cp().f("/tmp/foo").t("/tmp/bar").x(); (2) I made an api so people could quickly code up graphical output for commands. Just wondering if you'd be interested in integrating a feature like this. Do you have a chat channel?
- shockone 9y ago
  Yes there is a gitter channel: https://gitter.im/upterm/Lobby https://gitter.im/upterm/Lobby
hnlmorg 9y ago
I've given this a play and I hope you don't mind some constructive criticism I've experienced: First of, I really like the idea of this project despite normally being a vocal critic against Electron. However I think you bit off too much trying to write your own $SHELL as well as terminal emulator. The result is rather uncomfortable to use because there are shell bugs and incompatibilities compounding the usual expected bugs with any new terminal emulator. For example it took me 5 minutes to just cd into a directory because env vars weren't being recalled, the ~ variable wasn't being recalled, and auto-complete wasn't keyboard optimised (I'd arrow down and hit enter but it would crop the line rather than select the auto-complete entry). So the next thing I did was to start my preferred shell and I then ran into a whole other series of bugs due to the terminal emulator being tailored for it's own specific shell. In fact the bugs there were so severe that it renders the term virtually unusable on any of the standard shells nor the more esoteric ones I contribute to. One thing I was pleasantly surprised about though was how well it supported ANSI escape sequences - even ones that aren't part of the formal standard (such as the iTerms true colour sequences). But the bugs surrounding the terms handling of readline (and similiar) really feels like many of the basics are missing despite having some cool advanced features already. Overall, as much as I'm ideologically against Electron, I can see the advantages of using it in this domain because it allows the ability to include rich content in the command line. It might be nice to get to the point where the command line can offer as much rich content as a web page (something I'm working towards with my own project in fact) - in which case Electron (or similar tech) seems the obvious choice for building a terminal emulator. However upterm's dependance on using your own implementation of Bash (I think it's a bit disingenuous calling your shell "Bash" but that's your prerogative) makes this highly frustrating compared to other rich terminal emulators already out there. And the inability to run your own shell within upterm makes this inflexible for anyone wanting to do something a little more indepth than just cat'ing a JSON file (even running a DB command line tool like mysql or redis-cli would be impractical in upterm in it's current state. And while I didn't try SSHing into remote boxes I can see the same issues happening there too). I don't know the age of this project but I think it does have real potential. However if I was to ask for anything - and I appreciate this is your baby so I have no entitlement what-so-ever - it would be if you could offer a $SHELL'less version for power users. edit: Also, I've noticed commands that fail don't appear in the upterm's history. Was this an intentional decision? I appreciate there are arguments for and against only including successful commands but sometimes you'd typo something and the inability to up-array and edit my failed commend added to my frustration. If this was an intentional design decision then is it worth including the last command regardless of success and then excluding it from all subsequent placements in the history?
sametmax 9y ago
We really need a modern take on terminals, so keep up the good work. I know there is a lot of clash around electron apps these days, and I'm the first one to dislike the waste of resources. But maybe in 5 years electron and hardware will improve so much it won't matter anymore. So if it allows you to experiment with new stuff, keep going. And good luck.
celeritascelery 9y ago
How does upterm generate auto completion meta data for command line options and commands (Describing what they do)?
featherverse 9y ago
Why did you choose to use Electron? It appears to be universal reviled by developers.
- Kuraj 9y ago
  What's your opinion?
  - featherverse 9y ago
    There's like 1,000 programming languages and we don't need most of them. If a new language is truly amazing, by all means use it, but if it's hated by everyone I don't know why you'd choose it over something like C or Python or Perl which most developers seem to agree are the "good" languages. I don't know any of the above mentioned languages myself, so beyond that outsider perspective I can't form an opinion on it, I am just curious why this choice was made.
    - featherverse 9y ago
      Well it's been a few days and no answer. That's a strange result for an "ask me anything".
      - shockone 9y ago
        Sorry about that. I believe Electron is the best cross-platform UI framework. And TypeScript is an amazing language.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
Why use Electron, and not something like GTK or SDL?

Hi, author of Upterm here. Ask me anything.

coppolaemilio 9y ago

Windows version soon? :)

teekert 9y ago
One that easily uses Bash on Ubuntu on Windows??
- Diti 9y ago
  The actual term is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
  - teekert 9y ago
    I'm hearing many terms for it (https://www.google.nl/search?q=bash+on+ubuntu+on+windows&client=firefox-b&dcr=0&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI0LyasrbWAhWFaVAKHURrD7wQ_AUICygC&biw=1680&bih=980#imgrc=iMINvYbTR09F4M: https://www.google.nl/search?q=bash+on+ubuntu+on+windows&cli...)
shockone 9y ago
I'm afraid it's not going to happen any time soon, if at all. But even if it does happen, it won't be cmd.exe or PowerShell support, but rather some kind of POSIX shell for Windows.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rwmj 9y ago

Almost all my terminals are ssh'd into some remote machine. Do you still get the features like enhanced command line completion in this scenario? What about integrated screen/some other kind of reconnection?

shockone 9y ago
It's theoretically possible to have all the Upterm niceties over SSH, but not possible at the moment. As of screen and tmux, we have no plans to integrate with them.

joantune 9y ago

Autocompletion for env variables is great: i.e. `cd $THAT_ENV_DIRECTORY` however I always get `The directory "$THAT_ENV_DIRECTORY" doesn't exist. ` although clearly it does as it is autocompletion suggested

shockone 9y ago
It's a known bug, please vote to fix it faster. Variables interpolation doesn't work in built-in commands at the moment. https://github.com/railsware/upterm/issues/597 https://github.com/railsware/upterm/issues/597

grizzles 9y ago

I made a superficially similar thing but I've never released it. My differences: (1) The shell is in pure js. It's a thin wrapper around shelljs but I had plans to move to a builder type syntax, eg. fs.cp().f("/tmp/foo").t("/tmp/bar").x(); (2) I made an api so people could quickly code up graphical output for commands. Just wondering if you'd be interested in integrating a feature like this. Do you have a chat channel?

shockone 9y ago
Yes there is a gitter channel: https://gitter.im/upterm/Lobby https://gitter.im/upterm/Lobby

hnlmorg 9y ago

I've given this a play and I hope you don't mind some constructive criticism I've experienced: First of, I really like the idea of this project despite normally being a vocal critic against Electron. However I think you bit off too much trying to write your own $SHELL as well as terminal emulator. The result is rather uncomfortable to use because there are shell bugs and incompatibilities compounding the usual expected bugs with any new terminal emulator. For example it took me 5 minutes to just cd into a directory because env vars weren't being recalled, the ~ variable wasn't being recalled, and auto-complete wasn't keyboard optimised (I'd arrow down and hit enter but it would crop the line rather than select the auto-complete entry). So the next thing I did was to start my preferred shell and I then ran into a whole other series of bugs due to the terminal emulator being tailored for it's own specific shell. In fact the bugs there were so severe that it renders the term virtually unusable on any of the standard shells nor the more esoteric ones I contribute to. One thing I was pleasantly surprised about though was how well it supported ANSI escape sequences - even ones that aren't part of the formal standard (such as the iTerms true colour sequences). But the bugs surrounding the terms handling of readline (and similiar) really feels like many of the basics are missing despite having some cool advanced features already. Overall, as much as I'm ideologically against Electron, I can see the advantages of using it in this domain because it allows the ability to include rich content in the command line. It might be nice to get to the point where the command line can offer as much rich content as a web page (something I'm working towards with my own project in fact) - in which case Electron (or similar tech) seems the obvious choice for building a terminal emulator. However upterm's dependance on using your own implementation of Bash (I think it's a bit disingenuous calling your shell "Bash" but that's your prerogative) makes this highly frustrating compared to other rich terminal emulators already out there. And the inability to run your own shell within upterm makes this inflexible for anyone wanting to do something a little more indepth than just cat'ing a JSON file (even running a DB command line tool like mysql or redis-cli would be impractical in upterm in it's current state. And while I didn't try SSHing into remote boxes I can see the same issues happening there too). I don't know the age of this project but I think it does have real potential. However if I was to ask for anything - and I appreciate this is your baby so I have no entitlement what-so-ever - it would be if you could offer a $SHELL'less version for power users. edit: Also, I've noticed commands that fail don't appear in the upterm's history. Was this an intentional decision? I appreciate there are arguments for and against only including successful commands but sometimes you'd typo something and the inability to up-array and edit my failed commend added to my frustration. If this was an intentional design decision then is it worth including the last command regardless of success and then excluding it from all subsequent placements in the history?

sametmax 9y ago

We really need a modern take on terminals, so keep up the good work. I know there is a lot of clash around electron apps these days, and I'm the first one to dislike the waste of resources. But maybe in 5 years electron and hardware will improve so much it won't matter anymore. So if it allows you to experiment with new stuff, keep going. And good luck.

celeritascelery 9y ago

How does upterm generate auto completion meta data for command line options and commands (Describing what they do)?

featherverse 9y ago

Why did you choose to use Electron? It appears to be universal reviled by developers.

Kuraj 9y ago
What's your opinion?
- featherverse 9y ago
  There's like 1,000 programming languages and we don't need most of them. If a new language is truly amazing, by all means use it, but if it's hated by everyone I don't know why you'd choose it over something like C or Python or Perl which most developers seem to agree are the "good" languages. I don't know any of the above mentioned languages myself, so beyond that outsider perspective I can't form an opinion on it, I am just curious why this choice was made.
  - featherverse 9y ago
    Well it's been a few days and no answer. That's a strange result for an "ask me anything".
    - shockone 9y ago
      Sorry about that. I believe Electron is the best cross-platform UI framework. And TypeScript is an amazing language.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

Why use Electron, and not something like GTK or SDL?