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Very curious - what kind of people use OSH and how many actually use Oil in OSH? I am hesitant to spend the time ramping up on something like this because, as

Very curious - what kind of people use OSH and how many actually use Oil in OSH? I am hesitant to spend the time ramping up on something like this because, as much as possible, I try to write my shell scripts so that they can run without any additional packages in an Alpine docker container. Is this resistance that you have encountered before?

chubot 7y ago
Right now it's mainly a few shell enthusiasts and early adopters, i.e. people who want a better shell and want to influence the design of the Oil language. [1] I've definitely seen people who want to limit themselves to either bash or POSIX shell on purpose, and that's fine. For simple shell scripts, I might lean that way too (at least until Oil is smaller/faster). One major reason for Oil is to give you an upgrade path after you've used and enhanced such a shell script for years. Then you will likely bump up into shell's limitations, and the extra dependency will be worth it. For example, all Linux distros are based on thousands of lines of shell scripts [2], and I think those scripts desperately need a new language. They're big and complex, and need a better language to be correct, robust, and fast. Here's a comment I wrote that might explain the design goals of the project more: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/ddhmj9/you_can_now_try_the_oil_language/f2htup3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/ddhmj... [1] Oil Language Design Notes #1 http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/08/22.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/08/22.html [2] Success with Aboriginal, Alpine, and Debian Linux http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/15.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/15.html
- zomglings 7y ago
  Thank you, your response was very informative. It got me to dive a bit deeper into some of your essays and blog posts. I learned a lot particularly from these: 1. http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2016/11/06.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2016/11/06.html 2. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Shell-WTFs https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Shell-WTFs

chubot 7y ago

Right now it's mainly a few shell enthusiasts and early adopters, i.e. people who want a better shell and want to influence the design of the Oil language. [1] I've definitely seen people who want to limit themselves to either bash or POSIX shell on purpose, and that's fine. For simple shell scripts, I might lean that way too (at least until Oil is smaller/faster). One major reason for Oil is to give you an upgrade path after you've used and enhanced such a shell script for years. Then you will likely bump up into shell's limitations, and the extra dependency will be worth it. For example, all Linux distros are based on thousands of lines of shell scripts [2], and I think those scripts desperately need a new language. They're big and complex, and need a better language to be correct, robust, and fast. Here's a comment I wrote that might explain the design goals of the project more: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/ddhmj9/you_can_now_try_the_oil_language/f2htup3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/ddhmj... [1] Oil Language Design Notes #1 http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/08/22.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2019/08/22.html [2] Success with Aboriginal, Alpine, and Debian Linux http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/15.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/15.html

zomglings 7y ago
Thank you, your response was very informative. It got me to dive a bit deeper into some of your essays and blog posts. I learned a lot particularly from these: 1. http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2016/11/06.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2016/11/06.html 2. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Shell-WTFs https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Shell-WTFs