Next Generation Shell Weekly Meetings, 12 Dec 2021

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From YouTube: NGS weekly meeting #10 - 2021-12-12

Description

Project website - https://ngs-lang.org/

NGS use cases - https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs/wiki/Use-Cases

NGS UI design (to be implemented) - https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs/wiki/UI-Design

Discussions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rd67p6/ngs_next_generation_shell/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/rd687q/ngs_next_generation_shell/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29482872

https://lobste.rs/s/gxwpsh/ngs_next_generation_shell

A

Hello, welcome to weekly ngs meeting ngs stands for next generation. Shell, I'm elia shares the author of the project. uh Weekly meetings are about uh current progress and near future. Flip plans sometimes farther plans further in the future.

A

Okay. So uh let's do a bit of uh let's say we'll, let's say a table of contents contents. So um so you could um know what's in this episode. Okay, so first of all aws lambda, uh it's still in progress, not much to say about this, then we will go a bit into m1.

A

I got from work my new laptop, it's a one, so I did make some adjustments in ngs to accommodate uh this new setup.

A

That's not it's not a big volume of things that I want to say, but it's it's still there um then. I was thinking about the concept of contexts and I'd like to talk about that. um I have no idea how much time it will take, maybe between five and uh 15 minutes.

A

Something like that, uh and then uh this week uh there was like a social media activity around ngs and I uh watched that unfolding participated a bit and I would like to go over and maybe augment my responses to the questions that I have seen.

A

Okay, so m1, so uh I don't know if it's the operating system version or homebrew version- or um I don't know what it is. But homebrew is now installing things into opt homebrew something- and it was not the case previously. So I needed to change. Cmake builds to accommodate the situation. It was like very small change, but it's uh it's now in there in the dev branch. So if you got the newer.

A

Mac os or homebrew or whatever, and you get some build errors. You should try the latest the latest code from the dev branch.

A

That's pretty much it about that. So, let's go to contexts.

A

So um as I'm like living my life, I have some just some of these ideas about context, so I take take some notes and then, from time to time I go and update the wiki.

A

uh This is what I think about that, and so, let's before I share my screen and show the wiki and some particular thoughts the overview of contexts, what are context so um like the most common context that we know is like current directory right. It affects in which directory uh certain program will run so ucd to some directory. I think is of it as a context and another kind of context that we all know is environment variables right. It affects the programs that are run from this shell.

A

If you did export blah blah equals blah blah blah, then this environment variable is available to the programs that you're on and the programs that they run and so on.

A

So it is also kind of a context, and if I try to define context, that would be uh something that would affect uh the programs that you're going to run.

A

And I kind of try to generalize this concept of contexts and I'll share my screen now and we'll briefly go over the wiki page with some thoughts about this share screen.

A

Firefox and okay.

A

Allows them to share your screen: open system preferences, security and privacy, okay, click lock to make changes.

A

I need to type my password security and mac okay, so I checked the box zoom, as will not be able to record the context of your screen until it is quit. uh No I'll not. I will not be doing that.

A

What else I can try and maybe try to share the whole screen.

A

A

A

It does appear to be working. I hope it works, since I'm not 100 sure that it works. What I'll do I look I'll actually also read. What's on that page, okay, let's navigate to the page.

A

Okay, so context, design source page is called context, design.

A

Some kind of definition context is anything that would affect execution of following commands: um it's a generalization of current directory and environment variables.

A

So I see many different types of contexts, for example, a file or a directory or environment variable or a set of environment variables. Also, uh the kind of what's useful for me is aws profile which says: okay, I'm now switching profile to work on particular project and or environment.

A

um I find that it would be useful.

A

That the shell would understand that it's a context, because if, for example, I typed the export aws profile equals something, the shell should recognize. It's uh now a context and therefore I should have an indicator which is like outside of the main area, but there should be an indicator somewhere that I'm in this particular context.

A

Well, if you take bash, it will be usually in prompt or no no or it will be imprompt and it can become cluttered if you have like many of them. So I think to uh move the con context, uh indicators uh to separate area, and I think there could be quite a few of them right. I have profile, I have current directory.

A

I have maybe some other environment variables which affect other programs. um I have a git status situation.

A

I have git branch and by the way, while we imagine this special area for context, um also imagine that when you're in ui you click click on this or press, it you'll have also a history of recent contexts, so you could switch easily. So, for example, if I'm working on profile, I don't know project a production which is separate, aws account, and previously I worked on project a uh dev environment.

A

uh If I click on the the indicator, I should have the history that okay, I work on project a and dev and prod, and I can switch and of course, whenever you click that it's all uh being transformed into uh textual commands and uh they are on in the in the middle section where the the commands are the which the ones that you type also and the ones that are generated by ui for you so and if the commands I have textual representation, it has all the advantages of the textual representation, which is uh history, copy, paste and and whatnot okay.

A

So what else on the page? So um I was in the requirements section and it mentioned the context types. um So what else context should be able to do? uh There should be automatic detection? Like I said, for example, I have export aws profile. It detects the context. It understands that you're now, in the context.

A

Also, of course, if you do see the my folder, that's also um also should be detected and then be some kind of indicator, and also history um also note that some contexts are like pair directory context, so it complicates the implementation of it. So, for example, git branch is spare directory.

A

So we have per directory context, also think facility to create new contexts. uh For example, I want to create new aws profile it needs. This feature would assist me to create new section in the underlying configuration file.

A

Well, of course it must be pluggable, because I'm not going to do all of that in in the shell. It will be some additional modules.

A

And there should be a concept of resolved context, so, for example, if I'm using aws profile there is the resolved context would be aws account number.

A

So when I send uh some copy paste of what I'm doing to a friend, uh this copy paste should work on his or her machine and uh well, what happens if you named our aws profiles differently right, so this problem should be uh solved also, uh not so much sure about whether directories should be uh should have a property of absolute directory.

A

If you do cd, not sure how useful that would be- um and there are a couple of open issues which which I already uh thought about a bit, I bet I can find much more open issues. So how context would relate to bookmarks? Is there if there's any interplay with this other feature, which I'm kind of starting to think about bookmark uh right now? In my mind, it would be uh any object that you see on the screen.

A

You can bookmark, so you can get back to this object later, and this, maybe can be bookmarks might be generalized into text, so you would have maybe like different dimensions, so you can quickly find the commands by tags uh and or output objects by the way it's not only for commands. um I don't know need to think about this.

A

And what would happen if we allow to mark any object in the ui as a context which types would that be how they would that work? That's like completely unclear for now, okay, so that was about contexts and now I would like to move to my final topic for today, and that was uh social media social media. So I have uh here open a few places where some discussion happened.

A

I made a big font here because I'm not not sure on which screen you're looking at me, if you're on the mobile. That should be like good enough to read on the mobiles size of font. I hope I didn't test this. Actually, okay, let's, um let's see the first column, okay, it doesn't look as good as a neutral for shell type things, and once you get beyond the liners, it makes more sense to use an existing proper language like typescript or go okay. So.

A

Okay and yeah and props for having good list of alternatives. Okay, so first of all it just doesn't have any ui yet and of course any existing. Modern shell right now looks much better for the interactive use and I'm actually not even having final design for the guy, but I have quite a bunch of thoughts about the ui and I think it should be much more radically different from anything else that you have today, and why is that?

A

Because what you have today is kind of incremental improvements over what we had in the past, and um I'm really amazed that nobody thinks. Okay, uh you run a comma. Now you have some object on the screen. Why can't I interact with this object on the screen? It's like amazing that nobody does that and I'm not sure why and uh so so um on one hand uh existing uis in alternative modern shells, they look much better than bash, but right now I don't have anything to show.

A

So it's hard for me to like to argue, but I think what ngs will have will be significantly better, but it will have. It will take quite a bunch of time, um okay, so here I'm writing it's worth. There's no shell! Yet that's that's my um answer to the comment about uh shell type. Things um makes okay regarding makes way more sense to use an existing, proper language, okay and- and that's a kind of repeating, frequently asked uh not asked, but it's repeating thought from anybody who looks at ngs. Okay. Why?

A

Wouldn't they use just you know a proper language, so um guess what proper languages they're general purpose languages uh they can't and they will not be as good as say bash for manipulating files and processes, and then js can do that, because it's oriented in this way it's focused on this use cases.

A

So it's like why wouldn't they use like as a python over jq jq is not better than python. Right well depends on your use case. Actually so, because jq is focused on specific use cases for these use cases, it's actually much better than python or any anything else for that matter.

A

uh So and that's how I want people to look at ngs, it's not generally better, it's better for the intended use cases, because it focuses on these use cases.

A

So am I giving example of this function assert in ngs and there's a type which is called program and my example is assert program pandoc.

A

So with this three words, one of them is a name of the of the program uh you're doing something which is like a couple of lines, maybe three lines in bash and and more line and also more lines more than one line in other languages, and why that, because, first of all program is a domain specific type which represents object of the domain, so programs, external programs.

A

They are kind of.

A

One of the core concepts in ngs: um it's it's it's the domain of ngs to know about programs. So when you write a third program, it means that ngs is going to check path, find that program and if it doesn't find the program, it will give you an exception and it will not be just any exception.

A

It will say: program. Pandoc was not found in pass. Here's the path. So please do something about that um and this kind of from my perspective, it shows the focus on the domain uh in ngs, um okay, I'm giving the link to intended use cases and actually there's a very good list of alternative shells, and it's it's maintained by andy, the author of oil shell.

A

So if you guys are not seeing the video but just listening to me, oil, shell is one word: it's oil, shell, but it's together. That's how you find it on the internet. Okay.

A

Another comment looks interesting, definitely worth a closer look going through the documentation, as we speak, looks a bit unfinished but I'll install it and see where it can take me very nice. um I appreciate that. um So what I, uh what I answered uh yeah, please file, github issues.

A

If you see any issues in ngs which are bugs or like incomplete documentation, unclear documentation, guys and girls open github issues, uh I'm actually looking forward to it, because um for me it's a priority to make ngs um easier to use and be like more friendly, uh poor man's powershell. uh Well, I'm kind of um not answering that because this is uh completely unconstructive to the discussion.

A

Okay, another comment: um another project, this carbon itself are something modern and next generation with panduc among the dependencies and no interesting features. Give me a break. uh I think that this person was actually on reddit during the break. That's what that's my assumption, because if you are already not during a break, uh it's not good.

A

Okay, uh what else! So this was our programming on reddit. Now we are going to our linux admin on reddit and uh kind of see that it's like uh less perceived less good here in general, with less approach, I'm not sure if it actually means anything. But okay um does it include common suggestions.

A

I've been using fish for a while now almost entirely because of the fantastic common suggestion features. Nope interactive part is not ready. Okay, what else? Ok, quite a bit of discussion in hacker news and hacker news, um so what we have here, I tried to like powershell but found it unpleasant to use as a shell or scripting language. I agree. I did a small amount of coding in powershell.

A

I did read the uh around 1000 pages pdf um as it describes powershell. So it's probably something like user manual or whatever my favorite part is when they uh explained that comparing to null is not actually doing what you think.

A

Let's try to find that comparing now not what you think it's it was in the official documentation, uh docs everything you wanted to do about now um and and and before I'm going to like bash powershell. I think that the word power in powershell is actually well deserved and it actually exposes windows apis and whatnot, and you can do a bunch of things in powershell. I just kind of let's say: disagree with language design and that's another aspect: powershell null nullis.

A

The math is an automatic variable examples of now impact of now in numeric equation: place of collection in place of an object. Checking for now, you may have noticed that I always place the dollar now on the left when checking for donald. In my examples this is oh, let's make the form bigger.

A

So if you're on mobile should be able to read this, this is intentional and accepted as a powerful best practice. There are some scenarios where placing it on the right doesn't give you the expected result. Why? Because uh dash eq and the dash n e are comparison. Operators they're not like actually simple comparison, operators they're doing something else.

A

But I don't want to dive into this. I think that's from my perspective. It just shows like at the very least, some issues with the design of the language.

A

um Okay, let's close that go back okay, so I I actually do agree with this comment, but I didn't comment anything because I I don't think like it would be like interesting for anybody that I agree on that. Maybe I should comment, and you know make this person know I don't know um there are multiple. Perhaps even many next-gen shells ps is one, but it's not the only thing and shouldn't be yes.

A

I agree with that. um So what? What? What? What I don't know they are going to say something about powershell, uh okay and uh next one on lobsters. Let's see if anything changed, nothing changed, okay, um interesting. But what can I do with this that I can't do with either bash or my favorite scripting language?

A

um I understand the question. It's actually very um frequent question and thought, and I think it comes back to the focus of ngs on certain use cases, and that means that anything else that you will choose for these use cases uh most likely to be more verbose and more error. Pro.

A

Let's see what I answered here uh yeah, I also mentioned a set program um yeah. So it's it's it's. We are back to the uh focus thingy and okay and and if you are already comparing to basha, I don't I like the more time passes by I.

A

I more think that comparing to bus is not very fair to bash, because you know like how how you can compare to something that was like uh initiated decades ago and then and then and then nothing almost nothing could be actually fixed because you would be breaking existing code, so this is project from decades ago, and I it it doesn't, make much sense to compare.

A

But you know if you're already doing that, then you know the simplest example. If you, if you do dollar x and bash, uh you don't know to how many arguments it expands. I I think, okay, my.

A

My point of view, which is actually a kind of a guess, is that at the time the bush didn't have arrays. So there was like not much you could actually do about that. So they stuffed. You know some items, space delimited in in a variable and then it was like expanded to several arguments uh based on the data that you have in the variable.

A

This is uh you. Can you can't imagine that somebody is doing this today right that that any any argument that you passed a function? Actually it works like star x in and you don't know how many uh just for them. Looking at the code, you don't know how many arguments this will be um yeah and again compared to general purpose languages.

A

Well, it's the focus and- and you have all this function- it's not certainly that it's like kind of I took and refactored and factored out all these common things that you will be doing in bash like, for example, defining your like debug and worn and error functions at the top of each script because well in bash. It's somehow not common to use libraries, so you define these functions all like all over and over and over again, and I don't think it's productive and not only it's not productive.

A

It's like it takes few lines from each script and it makes you like well, you should probably copy paste this, but what about, if you like, say, forget to redirect it to standard error.

A

I I think like having this in the library is kind of no brainer. You know it's. It's used all the time. Just should have it um what else? Okay, so that was actually all in the social media this week.

A

I hope my answers make sense.

A

Don't hesitate to contact me on discord if you have more questions I'll be glad to answer so we went over um four issues today it was continuing progress um to be able to run ngs in aws lambda. That's actually. There was no progress this week, but it's in progress like in general, um the m1 and the homebrew adjustments, uh the idea of context and uh the overview of what happened on social media around ngs.

A

Okay, thank you for listening, uh subscribe like and what what was the last one? I always forget the last one whatever like and subscribe. Thank you for listening, bye.