3 ms·

I see Oil and oilshell posted here somewhat regularly. Is anyone using it and can relay their experiences? Is it ready to be used as a daily driver?

chubot 5y ago
(author here) I'd say it's better now for people who feel comfortable contributing (or just want to test it out and send feedback). Some parts of the project are mature (OSH language) but others are less mature (Oil language). Long reply in this thread that gives details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547185
- pxc 5y ago
  > Some parts of the project are mature (OSH language) but others are less mature (Oil language). In a way you've placed the opposite of the bet of most of your 'colleagues' in the field of pioneering new shells. To me, the other way around is more tempting because novelty is fun for you, the developer, and innovation here is the main attraction. Not to mention that lots of people might've burned out in the 'Osh phase', as it were. I hope that taking the long way around pays off for you, because I know it's been arduous! One advantage it might give Oil, given the attention you seem to pay to other projects in the same space, is that with the Oil language you can now also draw from other next-gen shell languages which have had opportunities to grow small communities and undergo revision in light of their use in the tome job were focusing on Osh. I really like some of those other projects, so of course I hope there's a place for them going forward as well (maybe as my own login shell, even!). But I'd love to see Osh earn an installed-by-default place on some major operating systems/distributions some day, and in that way open the door to widely distributed shell scripts in a more modern shell language in Oil. I look forward to really digging in to this new doc and writing some toy scripts. :)
  - chubot 5y ago
    Yes Oil is the only shell that's a graceful upgrade from POSIX sh and bash :) If it were done the other way around, that would have been impossible. As long as the implementation makes enough progress, I have no doubt it will pay off. I think this is "obvious" if you look at the history of technology, but I guess I have to publish this blog post draft called Don't Break X (Why Oil is a Long-Winded Project) - Don't Break Windows apps. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... - Don't break JavaScript and the web. From HOPL IV. https://hopl4.sigplan.org/details/hopl-4-papers/10/JavaScript-The-First-20-Years https://hopl4.sigplan.org/details/hopl-4-papers/10/JavaScrip... . Wirfs-Brock and Brendan Eich discuss whether the JS standards committee did the WRONG THING for 10 years. - Don't break the Linux kernel interface. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/235335/why-is-there-a-linux-kernel-policy-to-never-break-user-space https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/235335/why-is-there... (there is probably a better link for this one; there's one with a lot of profanity and insults from Linus Torvalds that I'm not sure I want to use) Similarly, Oil doesn't break shell, and we definitely need a shell like that. Other alternative, incompatible shells are valuable, but there's absolutely no question that there needs to be a compatible upgrade. Just like C++ has made huge leaps while Rust was being developed. (Crucially, Oil is different than C++ as it actually deprecates some legacy with parsing and runtime options.) ------ There's a distortion where all the people interested in Oil now are by definition interested in new stuff. That is, in reality 95% of people are more interested in OSH than Oil, because they don't care about new languages and they just want things to work. But the people I hear from are the 5% who care about new stuff. (which is good, but it's not representative). A similar distortion is that there are probably 10x to 50x more people working on C++ than Rust (e.g. at least 10,000 people at Google alone; I'd surprised if more than 100 or 1000 do any Rust for work. Also consider older companies like Oracle.). But if you were to go by this corner of the Internet, you might think Rust is the more popular language. In reality C++ is the far bigger and more capable ecosystem, if you care about robotics, embedded, AI, GPU, native desktop apps, information retrieval and data structures, etc.
    - pxc 5y ago
      What are the main reasons, if any, for users to prefer Osh to Bash today, even if they don't intend to use or learn Oil for the foreseeable future?
wodenokoto 5y ago
I think it comes up often because: - A lot of people here dream of better shell languages - Oil is very ambitious in that regard - Oil has a lot of in depth and well written articles about itself, and shell languages in general - Oil creator is active on HN

chubot 5y ago

(author here) I'd say it's better now for people who feel comfortable contributing (or just want to test it out and send feedback). Some parts of the project are mature (OSH language) but others are less mature (Oil language). Long reply in this thread that gives details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547185

pxc 5y ago
> Some parts of the project are mature (OSH language) but others are less mature (Oil language). In a way you've placed the opposite of the bet of most of your 'colleagues' in the field of pioneering new shells. To me, the other way around is more tempting because novelty is fun for you, the developer, and innovation here is the main attraction. Not to mention that lots of people might've burned out in the 'Osh phase', as it were. I hope that taking the long way around pays off for you, because I know it's been arduous! One advantage it might give Oil, given the attention you seem to pay to other projects in the same space, is that with the Oil language you can now also draw from other next-gen shell languages which have had opportunities to grow small communities and undergo revision in light of their use in the tome job were focusing on Osh. I really like some of those other projects, so of course I hope there's a place for them going forward as well (maybe as my own login shell, even!). But I'd love to see Osh earn an installed-by-default place on some major operating systems/distributions some day, and in that way open the door to widely distributed shell scripts in a more modern shell language in Oil. I look forward to really digging in to this new doc and writing some toy scripts. :)
- chubot 5y ago
  Yes Oil is the only shell that's a graceful upgrade from POSIX sh and bash :) If it were done the other way around, that would have been impossible. As long as the implementation makes enough progress, I have no doubt it will pay off. I think this is "obvious" if you look at the history of technology, but I guess I have to publish this blog post draft called Don't Break X (Why Oil is a Long-Winded Project) - Don't Break Windows apps. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... - Don't break JavaScript and the web. From HOPL IV. https://hopl4.sigplan.org/details/hopl-4-papers/10/JavaScript-The-First-20-Years https://hopl4.sigplan.org/details/hopl-4-papers/10/JavaScrip... . Wirfs-Brock and Brendan Eich discuss whether the JS standards committee did the WRONG THING for 10 years. - Don't break the Linux kernel interface. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/235335/why-is-there-a-linux-kernel-policy-to-never-break-user-space https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/235335/why-is-there... (there is probably a better link for this one; there's one with a lot of profanity and insults from Linus Torvalds that I'm not sure I want to use) Similarly, Oil doesn't break shell, and we definitely need a shell like that. Other alternative, incompatible shells are valuable, but there's absolutely no question that there needs to be a compatible upgrade. Just like C++ has made huge leaps while Rust was being developed. (Crucially, Oil is different than C++ as it actually deprecates some legacy with parsing and runtime options.) ------ There's a distortion where all the people interested in Oil now are by definition interested in new stuff. That is, in reality 95% of people are more interested in OSH than Oil, because they don't care about new languages and they just want things to work. But the people I hear from are the 5% who care about new stuff. (which is good, but it's not representative). A similar distortion is that there are probably 10x to 50x more people working on C++ than Rust (e.g. at least 10,000 people at Google alone; I'd surprised if more than 100 or 1000 do any Rust for work. Also consider older companies like Oracle.). But if you were to go by this corner of the Internet, you might think Rust is the more popular language. In reality C++ is the far bigger and more capable ecosystem, if you care about robotics, embedded, AI, GPU, native desktop apps, information retrieval and data structures, etc.
  - pxc 5y ago
    What are the main reasons, if any, for users to prefer Osh to Bash today, even if they don't intend to use or learn Oil for the foreseeable future?

wodenokoto 5y ago

I think it comes up often because: - A lot of people here dream of better shell languages - Oil is very ambitious in that regard - Oil has a lot of in depth and well written articles about itself, and shell languages in general - Oil creator is active on HN