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What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

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Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#101

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

ygra wrote: post #98
nunez wrote: post #85

WOW. cmd can actually parse escape codes now AND run Linux scripts! What a time to be alive. I've been using WSL for the last year now on my Surface Pro 4, and it has been nothing short of fantastic. This bridges a HUGE gap that made the MacBook attractive.

cmd has nothing to do with it. Just as bash has nothing to do with parsing terminal escape sequences. It's a shell. On Unix-likes a terminal or ~ emulator will handle those escape sequences, on Windows it's the console (provided by conhost). What program you run in the console (or terminal) is completely irrelevant.

Isn't cmd.exe the Windows terminal emulator?

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#102

Post by ygra »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #101
ygra wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cmd has nothing to do with it. Just as bash has nothing to do with parsing terminal escape sequences. It's a shell. On Unix-likes a terminal or ~ emulator will handle those escape sequences, on Windows it's the console (provided by conhost). What program you run in the console (or terminal) is completely irrelevant.

Isn't cmd.exe the Windows terminal emulator?

No, conhost.exe is (since Vista, prior to that it was a part of csrss). cmd.exe is simply the default command-line shell. To disprove your guess here, you can just observe the processes existing when running console applications. There's one conhost for each console window, but unless you run cmd, there'll be no cmd instances.

Windows didn't have a terminal emulator until recently anyway, as Windows console applications use the console APIs to change cursor position, color, etc. instead of having that API as part of the text stream that's output by applications.

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#103

Post by reynoldsbd »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #101
ygra wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cmd has nothing to do with it. Just as bash has nothing to do with parsing terminal escape sequences. It's a shell. On Unix-likes a terminal or ~ emulator will handle those escape sequences, on Windows it's the console (provided by conhost). What program you run in the console (or terminal) is completely irrelevant.

Isn't cmd.exe the Windows terminal emulator?

Nope, it's conhost.exe

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#104

Post by zouhair »

neilsimp1 wrote: post #93
nailer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cmder is ConEmu, just with a bunch of other stuff added to the download, including: - Something called 'git-for-windows' which isn't actually git for Windows https://git-scm.com/download/win but unremarkable things like shell additions which give you git status in the prompt, and a not-particularly-good GUI. - Clink (which is for cmd.exe). I.e., this doesn't in any way address the limitations mentioned in the post yo…

Doesn't it, though? It lets you create tabs, Ctrl+c - Ctrl+v, and works for Cmd, PowerShell, and Bash on Windows.

ConEmu does that

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#105

Post by RegW »

So what is the end game with WSL? What is it that MS is actually trying to do?

I remember the NT POSIX subsystem, which was a bit of a joke. It was badly limited and just seemed to be a box ticking exercise to get past some government requirements (disclaimer: I don't actually know if that's true). Whatever the reason, we ended up having to port our POSIX software to NT because customers insisted it was POSIX complient. I did resent MS for the mess we got into.

I do believe MS has changed. They don't seem to be the conniving organisation they once were, but what does WSL bring to Windows?

Perhaps, they are just accepting that there is something inevitable about all that Linux software that is available out there, and Linux developers could now be supporting Windows with no actual effort. After all Apple have saved themselves a load of effort by using Netbsd. However, something makes me wary. Could we be looking at an attempt to replace the Linux kernal on the servers of the world?

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#106

Post by nailer »

neilsimp1 wrote: post #93
nailer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cmder is ConEmu, just with a bunch of other stuff added to the download, including: - Something called 'git-for-windows' which isn't actually git for Windows https://git-scm.com/download/win but unremarkable things like shell additions which give you git status in the prompt, and a not-particularly-good GUI. - Clink (which is for cmd.exe). I.e., this doesn't in any way address the limitations mentioned in the post yo…

Doesn't it, though? It lets you create tabs, Ctrl+c - Ctrl+v, and works for Cmd, PowerShell, and Bash on Windows.

> > - ConEmu: mainly excellent but a little dated - eg, the active tab color is hard to distinguish but it can't be changed, apparently due to maintainer's insistence it works on Windows XP.

> It lets you create tabs, Ctrl+c - Ctrl+v, and works for Cmd, PowerShell, and Bash

Not sure why you think that's addressing this.

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#107

Post by tectec »

RegW wrote: post #105

So what is the end game with WSL? What is it that MS is actually trying to do? I remember the NT POSIX subsystem, which was a bit of a joke. It was badly limited and just seemed to be a box ticking exercise to get past some government requirements (disclaimer: I don't actually know if that's true). Whatever the reason, we ended up having to port our POSIX software to NT because customers insisted it was POSIX complie…

My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel. They can keep Windows 10 going for a few years yet (maybe up to 5?). That will give them time to work on cross-platform .NET, so new development will be an easy switch, and good quality Win32 emulation, which will be built someway on the work done on Wine.

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#108

Post by [deleted] »

nostoc wrote: post #100
nailer wrote: post #75

Windows Console folk: any chance of tabs in the official terminal? Current Windows terminal options: - ConEmu: mainly excellent but a little dated - eg, the active tab color is hard to distinguish but it can't be changed, apparently due to maintainer's insistence it works on Windows XP. - Hyper: excellent but Ctrl C, Ctrl R etc broken in powershell. Adding tabs to the Windows console makes more sense than have a thir…

Tmux solves your tab needs!

[deleted]

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#109

Post by zimbatm »

RegW wrote: post #105

So what is the end game with WSL? What is it that MS is actually trying to do? I remember the NT POSIX subsystem, which was a bit of a joke. It was badly limited and just seemed to be a box ticking exercise to get past some government requirements (disclaimer: I don't actually know if that's true). Whatever the reason, we ended up having to port our POSIX software to NT because customers insisted it was POSIX complie…

They want to attract developers.

One reason why it was so easy for Linux developers to switch to OSX was that they had a mostly-compatible shell environment.

Re: What’s New in Bash/WSL and Windows Console

#110

Post by lightbyte »

tectec wrote: post #107
RegW wrote: post #105

So what is the end game with WSL? What is it that MS is actually trying to do? I remember the NT POSIX subsystem, which was a bit of a joke. It was badly limited and just seemed to be a box ticking exercise to get past some government requirements (disclaimer: I don't actually know if that's true). Whatever the reason, we ended up having to port our POSIX software to NT because customers insisted it was POSIX complie…

My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel. They can keep Windows 10 going for a few years yet (maybe up to 5?). That will give them time to work on cross-platform .NET, so new development will be an easy switch, and good quality Win32 emulation, which will be built someway on the work done on Wine.

>My theory is that the next version of Windows is going to use the Linux kernel.

Windows 10 is the last version of Windows that Microsoft is making. It will be continuously updated instead of new versions being released.

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