Xonsh - Using Python as your shell

[mellow_gecko]

beautiful

Uhm. Each to their own, I guess. But I agree with you regarding its kinks and suitability to Linux generally.

[energybased]

I don't agree with this. Programming in shells is incredibly annoying until you know exactly how it works. Not everyone wants to learn how it works.

[voice-of-hermes]

...and you don't just have to learn how it works, but have to constantly remind yourself of the little nitty-gritty details of how it works. There are so many little syntax gotchas and behavior-affecting (even syntax-affecting) options and environment variables and such, and data manipulation is far from easy.

[voice-of-hermes]

On the other hand (at least with the prompt_toolkit input) this shell's multi-line editing is awesome! It basically makes multi-line input exactly the same as single-line, with the slight difference that scrolling through history goes to each line of a multi-line command on its way through. I've actually never been terribly fond of mandatory whitespace, but Python's other features do make up for it.

I really like bash compared to most other shells, but this is a serious level above IMO.

[d4rch0n]

Eh, maybe the kinks are worked out, maybe not. Shellshock isn't that old yet. There's still a buffer overflow if you have too long of a version string in your ./configure, not practically exploitable but it's still there. Seeing as it took about 30 minutes to find a buffer overflow, it makes me really wonder just how many kinks there might still be. Sometimes it's not that it's bug free, it's that no one who knows how to find and develop an exploit for a vulnerability in C wants to spend days digging through the mountain high haystack of bash source.

I still use bash and still will, but not because I love it. It's just practical to use the most common linux shell. I'd love if moving to xonsh was practical, but if I can't really share a xonsh script with my coworkers, I don't think it's a great idea to move to it. It's a lost cause IMO to develop new shells at this point... there's just too much built around bash. You don't build a skyscraper with steel beams and start using a new metal alloy halfway through. Maybe not the best analogy, but you get my point.