Nushell and Uutils

#1

Post by michaelangerman » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

Re: Nushell and Uutils

#2

Post by mongol » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

In a way, this is cool. But I am also confused. Why does a shell include commands? Is this the beginning of a new type of distribution? A new type of GNU perhaps? Probably not. But I am not completely following what this provides that the two projects independently would not.

Re: Nushell and Uutils

#3

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 7:08 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Nushell and Uutils

#4

Post by dubcanada » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 7:11 PM UTC

mongol wrote: post #2

In a way, this is cool. But I am also confused. Why does a shell include commands? Is this the beginning of a new type of distribution? A new type of GNU perhaps? Probably not. But I am not completely following what this provides that the two projects independently would not.

I suppose this particular shell includes a ton of functions/commands already.

Re: Nushell and Uutils

#5

Post by llimllib » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

mongol wrote: post #2

In a way, this is cool. But I am also confused. Why does a shell include commands? Is this the beginning of a new type of distribution? A new type of GNU perhaps? Probably not. But I am not completely following what this provides that the two projects independently would not.

Current shells include [lots of builtins](https://www.unix.com/man-page/freebsd/1/builtin/), I don't think including a `cp` or `mv` that fits a shell with a different style is that different

Re: Nushell and Uutils

#6

Post by forgotpwd16 » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

mongol wrote: post #2

In a way, this is cool. But I am also confused. Why does a shell include commands? Is this the beginning of a new type of distribution? A new type of GNU perhaps? Probably not. But I am not completely following what this provides that the two projects independently would not.

One benefit is portability. Writing a script utilizing those commands won't depend on those tools being available, only the shell. Another potential one is performance. In the specific case of nushell which is object-based it may also needed for piping object-data.

Re: Nushell and Uutils

#7

Post by lgg » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 7:17 PM UTC

mongol wrote: post #2

In a way, this is cool. But I am also confused. Why does a shell include commands? Is this the beginning of a new type of distribution? A new type of GNU perhaps? Probably not. But I am not completely following what this provides that the two projects independently would not.

I presume the reason they do it is that the premise of Nushell is that it uses pipes of structured output instead of simple text streams. That means that they need all the tools to output datas in that form. They could include wrappers for all OS provided binaries and handle the conversion in those wrappers, but that makes you incredibly fragile to minor output or flags changes, and in many cases those wrappers would end up being more complex than the complex than the commands themselves.

Re: Nushell and Uutils

#8

Post by mongol » Mon, Sep 18, 2023, 7:18 PM UTC

llimllib wrote: post #5

mongol wrote: post #2

In a way, this is cool. But I am also confused. Why does a shell include commands? Is this the beginning of a new type of distribution? A new type of GNU perhaps? Probably not. But I am not completely following what this provides that the two projects independently would not.

Current shells include [lots of builtins]( https://www.unix.com/man-page/freebsd/1/builtin/ ), I don't think including a `cp` or `mv` that fits a shell with a different style is that different

Good point. I wonder if there was some criteria that determined if a utility were to be a command or a builtin, originally. I thought a shell first and foremost was about working with processes, and a little less about working with files. But both are obviously needed, one way or another, so will be interesting to see what becomes of this.