What's Happened Since February? • Hacker News Board

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#11

Post by RobertRoberts » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

canadaduane wrote: post #4

Oil is a promising attempt to make a backwards-compatible but progressively better and more sane unix shell. I look forward to trying it out!

I use unix (linux) every day, what does Oil fix that is wrong with bash/shell? (I am not a power user per se, so genuinely curious what I am missing out on)

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#12

Post by frou_dh » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

ChrisRR wrote: post #2

Why is that website so narrow? It only takes up about 20% of the width of my monitor

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#13

Post by bovermyer » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

ChrisRR wrote: post #2

Why is that website so narrow? It only takes up about 20% of the width of my monitor

To answer your question directly: because it's more legible and follows sane typographical practices.

Also: why in the nine hells are you critiquing the design of the site instead of talking about the content of the article?

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#14

Post by winter_blue » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

A slight tangent: I discovered the Zephyr ASDL (Abstract Syntax Description Language) by looking at the oilshell blog: https://www.oilshell.org/blog/tags.html?tag=ASDL#ASDL

There are interesting posts about the ADSL, as well as about implementing interpreters in that blog. Definitely piqued my interest as someone passionate about language design.

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#15

Post by iimblack » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #11

canadaduane wrote: post #4

Oil is a promising attempt to make a backwards-compatible but progressively better and more sane unix shell. I look forward to trying it out!

I use unix (linux) every day, what does Oil fix that is wrong with bash/shell? (I am not a power user per se, so genuinely curious what I am missing out on)

Here's a page from the developer explaining this: http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/28.html

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#16

Post by yorwba » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #11

canadaduane wrote: post #4

Oil is a promising attempt to make a backwards-compatible but progressively better and more sane unix shell. I look forward to trying it out!

I use unix (linux) every day, what does Oil fix that is wrong with bash/shell? (I am not a power user per se, so genuinely curious what I am missing out on)

"Why Create a New Unix Shell?": http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/28.html

If you want just one example, automatic completion in bash uses a bash parser written in bash, incompatible with the bash interpreter's own parser. OSH uses the same parser for both the interpreter and the completion engine. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/issues/208#issuecomment-4496...

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#17

Post by Brakenshire » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 6:41 PM UTC

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #10

Seems like a very confusing name for a shell, seeing this without knowing the context I saw 'Oil', 'Shell' and assumed that it was about some oil spill or event with Shell Oil that happened in February I was unaware of. Looks like an interesting project regardless.

I’d say the developer is making their life much more difficult by using such a confusing name, which is a pity because the project looks really interesting.

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#18

Post by russh » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

ChrisRR wrote: post #2

Why is that website so narrow? It only takes up about 20% of the width of my monitor

I like it. I can Zoom in 300% and easily read the text with my outdated prescription glasses.

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#19

Post by richardhod » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #10

Seems like a very confusing name for a shell, seeing this without knowing the context I saw 'Oil', 'Shell' and assumed that it was about some oil spill or event with Shell Oil that happened in February I was unaware of. Looks like an interesting project regardless.

Agreed. Also mods, please can we alter the title to something more descriptive and less baity?

Re: What's Happened Since February?

#20

Post by hawski » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

The most interesting part for me is MyPy to C++ conversion. I understand it's easier that way. It certainly makes it easier to package Oil. It's a necessary step to bootstrap all the work. Certainly such a conversion tool would be in interests of wider community, so I wonder is there any more movement in the area.

I have a small hope that it will eventually go off C++, because it may be impossible to change mind of significant part of Unix community. But it's all good, because work involved is outstanding already.