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After learning of the existence of a bunch of compatibility layers, I'm now occasionally pining for a Linux→Mac one. Because dealing with BSD software, aka ‘unk
by aasasd 7y ago
After learning of the existence of a bunch of compatibility layers, I'm now occasionally pining for a Linux→Mac one. Because dealing with BSD software, aka ‘unknown option --help’, is a source of irritation sometimes. Plus there's actually open-source Linux software that doesn't have open-source analogs on Mac (not that I'll remember right now what it was).
But then again, Linux has /proc and a boatload of common APIs beyond kernel calls.
- saagarjha 7y agohttps://github.com/tbodt/ish https://github.com/tbodt/ish https://github.com/linux-noah/noah https://github.com/linux-noah/noah
- jcelerier 7y agoFirst thing I do on my macs is installing gnu coreutils, sed, awk, etc. I'm happy for people who enjoy the "ideological UNIX purity" of BSD tools but I like to get work done and I don't think that comparing bloat between GNU tools and BSD tools is a conversation that you can meaningfully have on any recent compiter as a full hd wallpaper likely uses more RAM than both combined.
- trasz 7y agoThe —help is not particularly useful when you have proper man pages.
- rkeene2 7y agoIt is often less verbose than a man page so can be seen entirely without a pager, which is often all you need when you are looking for a reminder of that periodically used option. Certainly having both options (man page and inline help) is better than having only one option.
- trasz 7y agoIf you can’t find what you need in the man page, because of the bloat, well, it’s the bloat that’s the problem, not the lack of —help.
- CameronNemo 7y agoNak. Help output can be more concise because it does not have to explain what the command is used for, does not have to enumerate every option for a particular flag, does not need a "See Also" or "Examples" section, etc.
- trasz 7y agoIt's what the SYNOPSIS section is for, at the top of the man page, so you don't need to scroll down in the pager. In a more general sense, though, this is why BSD systems generally try to avoid bloat in the core utilities. It's not about the code size - it never was - but rather the overhead on maintainers and users.
- evanrelf 7y ago`brew install coreutils` goes a long way to help with stuff like that.
- kiwijamo 7y agoAs someone who prefers BSD, I feel right at home on the macOS command line. Although it has slowly been moving towards Linux, e.g. macOS now defaults to bash for the shell.