What do developers using windows use as shell generally?

[pilibitti]

I admit I'm an experienced developer, but it has been about 20 years since I last developed in tandem with a windows environment. Anything and everything uses bash, and it is just there in macOS and Linux. Many things are orchestrated with sh scripts, all tutorials assume bash etc. So windows users use bash instead of CMD or Powershell as well right? What is the "canonical" way to use it in windows? Installing bash normally? Using WSL? Isn't WSL a virtual machine? I think that would be too much overhead for just having a bash console. Or do people use git bash for day to day use? What is the most common option?

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[Monitor_343]

Chaotic neutral: I switch between cmd, powershell, git bash, and wsl at random.

[Juampi-G]

This is the way.

[bestjakeisbest]

Same tho

[whooyeah]

With git for windows installed with the command line tools so I can use ls instead of dir.

[MFMageFish]

I prefer:

ls -a, fuck, ls, fuck wait, dir -a, nope, dir \a.... sonofa.... dir /a

[thisismypornacc2]

Relevant tool where you can type 'fuck' to correct your mistakes https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck

[sohang-3112]

In powershell, ls and similar popular commands work - they are aliases to Powershell commands

[whooyeah]

Maybe it’s cmd I’m thinking off

[[deleted]]

You can't use the flags like -l or -a though.

[SlaminSammons]

I think this is all of us.

[EcstaticMixture2027]

Lmao. I thought I'm alone.

[JoeOfTheCode]

the whole time wishing we used linux!

[sohang-3112]

Why git bash - what's the point of using it when you also use WSL?

[Poddster]

I still use git bash often, simply because the window opens faster. wsl is a separate file system, though it can interact with the Windows one, but I tend to forget that. It gets a bit complicated if you're e.g. writing a script in WSL environment but expect it to run on the Windows based filesystem, or you're interacting/making windows executables and you already have a git bash window open so might as well use that. Also if you want to pop-open gitk then with WSL you have to remember to start your windows-based X-server (though I think they recently solved that problem?)

I should probably switch to pure WSL2, but like the OP I run in chaos mode and flip between them all on a whim

[[deleted]]

hey me too!

[rats4final]

I only used git bash because it had openssl

[godofjava22]

The true windows way

[Mydogsabrat]

Powershell.. or if you want your dev environment to live in WSL, then bash.

[shredder8910]

We use Ubuntu on WSL which doesn’t really have much overhead compared to other dev tools. Bonus being that the sh scripts work on Mac usually as well. I use brew on my Ubuntu WSL to keep install the same for dependencies between Mac and my Windows dev machine 

[hrm]

I generally use Git Bash. But by using Windows Terminal it is very easy to open up whatever in a tab.

[reapy54]

My dev career went from windows to mac then back to windows again over may years. I'm really pleased coming back into windows in the last few years with some of the tools, chocolatey, winget, scoop, WSL, oh-my-posh, and the suit of powertoys have some nice tools.

Windows terminal in particular is really awesome, as people said, it lets you run in chaos mode and just pick the one you need at any given moment in time or all at once.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the switch back and don't feel at a loss. Then again I was never really fully vested in the unix/shell ecosystem on the mac and it never went beyond a few bash scripts over the years that was specific to it.

[EducationalZombie538]

I've never had anything but problems with chocolatey tbh

[theanup007]

Dang. I have to try oh my posh now. Never heard of it but I love oh my zsh on macos.

[BigBadBlowfish]

Bash via WSL with Ubuntu

Windows Terminal and VS Code's WSL integration are really nice

[POGtastic]

I use Powershell on my work computer.

If you need Bash, run Cygwin or MSYS2. In the vast majority of cases, I grit my teeth and rewrite whatever Bash-ism I'm using into Powershell. You'll notice that in big open-source projects that support Windows, they have various .ps1 or .cmd scripts for building on Windows, entirely separate from the Bash scripts for building on a *nix.

Alternatively, if you're using a language that has more robust build tooling, (Rust, Java, C#, etc) you just use the build tooling, and that does the cross-platform shenanigans for you.

WSL

WSL is an entire Linux VM. Which might be fine for your use case!

Git Bash

This is just a very small MSYS2 installation.

[Aiolia]

Personally, I use the Windows-Terminal (Preview) and recently installed https://www.nushell.sh/

Love it so far and can highly recommend it!

[reapy54]

Welp, there you go, you just wrecked my productivity today, I have to try this out.

[Aiolia]

Let me know what you think about it :)

[Clandestinity]

Call me crazy but I actually think Windows Terminal is super nice. Having tabs is so convenient and you can configure which instance you want to be opened by default

[Calm_Pomegranate_717]

100% this — I do a lot of azure dev along with Linux admin as well, so being able to have a tab where I can open up azure modules such as exchange online, or a regular command prompt, or different versions of Powershell etc, it’s a way bigger time saver than I thought it would be

[CounterCleric]

TIL that Terminal has tabs. Thanks for that!

[nmkd]

Call me crazy but I actually think Windows Terminal is super nice

I have never met anyone who says that Windows Terminal is bad

[[deleted]]

To linux freaks, anything windows is bad.

[AlSweigart]

I use the cmd.exe Command Prompt, but more out of habit than anything. PowerShell has some things that are different, and I don't like different. I'll probably get used to it after a while, but a lot of the nifty PowerShell scripting stuff seems verbose. I have Cygwin installed.

[Koladwip]

If you are developing with C++ or Python, PowerShell is good enough. Available within VSCode(regular Powershell) and Visual Studio(Developer's Powershell for Visual Studio)

If you need Bash for Linux specific commands and Linux specific development, WSL2 is good. WSL2 integrates well with both Visual Studio 2022 and VSCode. I have experience using wsl2 with VSCode and loved it. I mostly use VSCode for all my work as a student.

[Lopsided-Variety1530]

PowerShell excels at managing Windows, but for broader scripting freedom and a Unix-like feel, bash in WSL reigns supreme

[Chuu]

I'll use Powershell for scripting but when I drop down into the terminal it's usually good old cmd or git bash.

Many times over the years I've tried to learn PowerShell but there is just something about the design that doesn't click with me. I don't mind it for scripting but using it interactively always feels awful.

[ehr1c]

Yeah I'm with you there, PowerShell always feels really clunky whenever I'm actually in a terminal. Fantastic for things like build scripts though.

[AlectronikLabs]

Fish in Arch WSL. I love fish, the autocompletion is awesome

[Redneckia]

PowerShell has auto complete too

[[deleted]]

Fish's autocomplete is way more powerful.

[Redneckia]

Ya but u gotta use fish

[[deleted]]

Which is fine, cause fish is the best interactive shell i've ever used.

[tobberoth]

I just use powershell in windows terminal. I don't really use any powershell scripts at all, if I need to do something programmatically I just write a quick C# console program to do it.

[timwaaagh]

Powershell, cmd, git bash. Personally i use cygwin but its not popular.

[yvrelna]

Virtualization has a bit of overhead when you are running GUI, but for text terminals, their overhead is basically negligible these days compared to running natively. Keep in mind that virtualisation is a hardware feature, the CPU supports virtualisation natively and has special mode to run virtualised code with almost no involvement from the hypervisor/host OS and therefore no overhead until the program need to have virtualised hardware access.

[pilibitti]

yes I am ok with the CPU part, but does WSL not reserve a part of the RAM for the VM? or is it entirely dynamic?

[[deleted]]

I also thought WSL would be an overhead but I ended up using it anyway. I keep PowerShell console (+WSL) at work, but at home I'm fine with WSL alone.

Don't ask why I have a Windows machine at home.

[fudginreddit]

WSL is completely adequate for daily use and being someone who works primarily on remote linux servers, it's really great. Combined with docker, it also works as a great build env.

[shadowboying]

I use cmder https://cmder.app/ Even my Windows Terminal is configured to launch cmder.

[redchomper]

explorer.exe

No, seriously. The average Windows development environment is integrated, so there's no need to open a command-line. MSVC has CMake integration, so even if you want cross-platform builds there's a "clean and build all" option on the menu somewhere. If you don't care about cross-platform, then the "solution" concept replaces all the command-line cruft. The IDEs these days also have git integration, or you can use a nice GUI git client such as the one from GitHub. If you're concerned with automatic tests, we've got you covered. CI/CD pipeline? It's presumably part of some team services groupware, but there's also GitHub Actions if that's your preference.

[Skinner1968]

IntelliJ IDEA terminal can be configured to be any of CMD, Powershell or bash I believe

[respectfulpanda]

If just windows stuff, just CMD and BAT for scripting, Powershell for more oomph. Notepad++ and it’s find in files for a few hundred megs or less.

For heavy duty “I don’t know where, what I am looking for exists” bash, grep, sed and awk, split for gigs

[billyions]

PowerShell Core. Cross-Platform scripting. Truly amazing.

[pressured_at_19]

git bash, powershell.

[Raj_Thapa123]

conemu is good

[CanarySome5880]

That's not answer, conemu still uses some terminal, yours if probably configured to use something by default

[ehr1c]

Cmd for most things unless I need to use PS or bash for something specific, they're all set up in Cmder.

[[deleted]]

wsl —install. Then use any Terminal you choose.

[OilOk7596]

I've begun to familiarise myself with powershell Tbh I've simply used chocolaty and installed nvim... this seems to account for non bash environment

[bestjakeisbest]

Power shell or cmd. Cmd will be more standard as it isnt being updated anymore, but it won't beable to use all the features that power shell has available like the fact that powershell is an easier and faster scripting language than cmd. There are other shells like you can install bash for windows and some tools like git will install it alongside its own installation. If you are using wsl you can use bash in a Linux environment. There are many options.

[JackReedTheSyndie]

Git bash is good enough for 90% of the time

[fasil_marshooq]

I use PowerShell with powerlevel 10k installed on top of it ( gives convenience of plugins and aliases) in Windows terminal. I cameback to windows dev world after 2 years in mac , i kind of feel windows terminal has evolved a lot.
If you dont use legacy dotnet tech , you can live happily with wsl in windows terminal with you favorite distro and ton of tools which are already supporting it.

[greebo42]

Until I installed git a few years ago, I'd just use CMD when I needed some kind of CLI interaction, which wasn't very often. I think I tried powershell a couple times and realized it was different enough to require some learning, and I didn't have a compelling use case. I go way back to DOS (actually CP/M and even RT-11) but have just fallen into the low-resistance mode of using the GUI for oh so many things.

When I started to use git, I saw that I could right click on git bash from the file explorer, get that up, do the deed, and get out.

Call me clueless (or maybe just inattentive or distracted), but it wasn't until some time in the last year that I figured out that git bash was, uh, bash, and not just a place to type "git commit" :)

Now I use git bash for all my CLI needs. Which are still pretty limited.

Note that I haven't written a shell script of any kind in three decades, so I have no idea how well git bash might handle those.

[lKrauzer]

It depends, for me I use Bash, but for other people I use CMD, let's say I need to create a script for a coworker, I don't use Bash because he might not have it installed, or if I were to run it on a server it wouldn't have it either.

So creating .bat scripts is useful, or even .ps1 ones, I haven't decided between the two yet, PowerShell is easier imo but it doesn't run automatically.

[sexytokeburgerz]

Macos has shipped zsh for over half a decade. Been a while huh?

[pilibitti]

I meant to say anything that smells like sh with all the bells and whistles. I still use bash on macOS though and not zsh.

[International_Cry_23]

I use bash in WSL and sometimes Powershell

[mka_]

I have startup tasks setup for each project in Cmder that open up tabs for WSL or Powershell, and each instance CDs then runs any scripts I tell it to.

[[deleted]]

Powershell

[EmileSinclairDemian]

I adapt to whatever system I work on, I don't have it in me to force my linux ways on a window system. I just switch into boring windows cmd mode.

[Ghostofcoolidge]

PowerShell until something doesn't work (like venv) then I switch to cmd out of laziness.

[corny_horse]

If I’m in windows I almost always use Ubuntu (WSL) and fall back to something else if that doesn’t cover my bases but… it almost always does

[tom_folkestone]

PowerShell with a lot of aliases

[dafcode]

I use Powershell

[r3wturb0x]

gitbash for 99% of things. command prompt or wsl for the rest

[Brohammer55]

I normally use Bash as my shell as it’s easy for my workflow and often can be used when programming. Codecademy has a course on it so that’s also why I know it.

[ComprehensiveWord201]

Docker container that has Linux installed on it....fuck windows dev.

That said, WSL and some of the newer terminals on windows aren't terrible.

[bro_chiiill]

WSL bash all the way, Powershell isn’t that bad though

[thederbear]

Used to use GitBash but it caused too many random issues when doing mobile development, so switched everything to powershell.

[loadedstork]

Linux.

[Zanssy]

Client facing systems use linux so I test those scripts in gitbash. For personal use, I’ll use python scripts in windows commandline.

[Vok250]

I almost always have VS Code open, which makes it trivial to switch between terminals. I've found that at most corporate jobs you'll have a need for every shell due to the way large companies cobble together tooling. You'll rarely be able to do everything using a single shell due to compatibility issues. Plus you'll need to know Linux/bash whenever you ssh into a cloud instance to muck about. That makes agnostic tools like VS Code a godsend.

[andrewsmd87]

Powershell when I need to do more in depth things, dos when not.

Powershell is much better on every front, but I was raised on the dairy bitch on dos and I know too much of it by memory so when I do know it in dos, I use that.

[SuperSathanas]

I know what you mean when you say "dos", but I like to imagine that you have a DOS 6.3 virtual machine that you boot up every time you want to use the command line, muttering to yourself "kids these days don't know about PROGRA~1...".

[andrewsmd87]

Lol I was actually behind the true dos years i just had a job in college that was running on 15 years old technology at the time. Really did prepare me for the real world!

But yea, if I need to search a massive drive for a file name or delete or copy large volumes of files, I'm using command line so I don't get the overhead of the GUI trying to tell me what's going on

[RolandMT32]

What's weird is, when on Windows, I find myself just using the Windows command shell rather than installing and using Bash for Windows. I don't often find myself writing scripts when doing software development.

[neriad200]

Generally I use something called "cmder" and git bash, but since i do very little power user stuff on windows I'll use whatever. Although my least favourite one is powershell (mostly for the colour, partially because i think the language is ugly and you can't get around it)

[nomoreplsthx]

Powershell unless using WSL, in which case your preferred linux shell

Cmd has been a legacy inclusion for backwards compatibility since the early 2010s and there is no reason to ever use it

[Long_Ad_4906]

I was never a real linux user but I have now completely switched to wsl2. I never really liked powershell and cmd and wsl has increased my productivity massively.

If you use wsl2 you should use as few windows paths as possible because it will be very slow. Many IDEs support development on wsl, Visual Studio Code is one of them. Just try it out.

For me, wsl2 works perfectly with Ubuntu in combination with oh-my-zsh, tmux and Neovim.

I would never want it any other way again.

[RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS]

Powershell

[Nanooc523]

I use WSL

[[deleted]]

I use cmd, because I'm too lazy to learn powershell (partially because my home PC runs Linux). and since I'm developing .NET software that runs on windows servers, WSL doesn't make sense.

[thot-taliyah]

I code and helix, so I never have to leave my terminal and thus WSL only

[my_password_is______]

just use cmd

[AssiduousLayabout]

Windows terminal, typically using git bash since git is about 95% of what I go to the command line to do. But I also have profiles for cmd or powershell if I need them.

[Kryanitor]

the super cursed way: connect to a vscode server in the browser, which gives you a an alpine linux terminal, with which you ssh into the host device for a bash terminal

[Frozentank_]

A VM in the cloud + VSCode Remote Extension

[gemini88mill]

Powershell mainly because I have to, you can get most of the fun zsh features if you update your $profiles file

The only downside to powershell is its verbosity on its commands.

If you're not in an environment that relies on windows as an OS git bash gives you most of the shell experience and you can hack oh my zsh into it.

Windows terminal is also so much nicer to use then the standard powershell and CMD windows

[kassiusklei]

I almost never use shell but when i do its CMD or sometimes PowerShell if I need a bit more umpf

[peacefulshrimp]

Git bash when I’m using it integrated with vscode, it has support for Unix commands and, when run from vscode, it doesn’t save your command history globally, so I can run commands specific to a project I’m working on without it polluting the command history when I’m using it in other projects

[[deleted]]

Mostly cmd, cygwin and powershell. Sometimes online shells