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Oils is our upgrade path from bash to a better language and runtime. It's also for Python and JavaScript users who avoid shell!

225 mentions on Hacker News by 35 people: 15 stories, 210 comments · first 2016-11-26 · latest 2025-11-06

Mentions per year 225 mentions · busiest year 2020 (52)
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  1. …I used to maintain this page, but there are so many problems with shell that I haven't kept up ... https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Shell-WTFs OSH is the most bash-compatible shell, and it's also now Almquist shell compatible:…
    comment by chubot · 2025-11-06 · in You should write an agent
  2. Many of these projects are on: Alternative Shells - https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Alternative-Shell... Internal DSLs for Shell - https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Internal-DSLs-for... - nearly every language: Python,…
    comment by chubot · 2025-10-12 · in Show HN: A Lisp Interpreter for Shell Scripting
  3. …toes in to see if it works for you I wrote this page a few years ago to help people assess the fit: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Where-Contributor... The job is remote-only, and we slightly prefer non-US contributors due to…
    comment by chubot · 2025-10-02 · in Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2025)
  4. …...) ABS is listed on this wiki page, along with many Python- and JavaScript- influenced shells: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Alternative-Shell... https://koi-lang.dev/ https://github.com/alexst07/shell-plus-plus…
    comment by chubot · 2025-09-30 · in The ABS programming language
  5. ▲ 12
    Process Tracing Projects
    story by todsacerdoti · 2025-09-26 · 0 comments
  6. …and bash is of course there on every image. We do that for https://oils.pub/ sourcehut yaml: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/tree/master/.builds github yaml: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/tree/master/.github/wo... They both…
    comment by chubot · 2025-08-20 · in Modern CI is too complex and misdirected (2021)
  7. …not sure how viable it actually is i.e. maintainers might have moved on for various reasons. [0] https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils
    comment by pdimitar · 2025-07-21 · in Debugging Bash Like a Sire (2023)
  8. ▲ 5
    Why Lexing and Parsing Should Be Separate
    story by todsacerdoti · 2025-07-20 · 0 comments
  9. There's a whole list of alternative syntaxes here: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Alternative-Regex... I haven't actually used them because generally the right alternative to a regex is a proper parser.
    comment by IshKebab · 2025-07-09 · in Why LLMs Can't Write Q/Kdb+: Writing Code Right-to-Left
  10. …things, and most of them get to 80% or so. I like that you mention a lot of prior art! More links: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Headless-Shell-Pr... Feel free to join any of the Zulip discussions ... there are a bunch of…
    comment by chubot · 2025-07-07 · in Operators, Not Users and Programmers
  11. …30+ years too! (and I didn't realize it was still maintained) https://www.illumos.org/issues/17442 https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/issues/2058 There is a subtle issue with respect to: 1) "trusting" the $PWD value you inherit from…
    comment by chubot · 2025-06-25 · in Deep Down the Rabbit Hole: Bash, OverlayFS, and a 30-Year-Old Surprise
  12. …are some related links here, like How To Build Static Analyzers in Orders of Magnitude Less Code : https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Polyglot-Language...
    comment by chubot · 2025-06-13 · in Three Algorithms for YSH Syntax Highlighting
  13. …(other shells like the Scheme shell used to bootstrap Guix have) And feel free to post a message to https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils if you're interested or have questions
    comment by chubot · 2025-05-07 · in Brush (Bo(u)rn(e) RUsty SHell) a POSIX and Bash-Compatible Shell in Rust
  14. …that, in 2025, there are MORE new people learning POSIX shell/bash, than say any other shell here: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Alternative-Shell... Because they want to get work done for the cloud, or embedded systems, or…
    comment by chubot · 2025-05-06 · in Brush (Bo(u)rn(e) RUsty SHell) a POSIX and Bash-Compatible Shell in Rust
  15. …to be the only shell that aims for POSIX/bash compatibility, out of dozens of alternative shells: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Alternative-Shell... As far as I know, OSH is the most POSIX- and bash-compatible shell: Nine…
    comment by chubot · 2025-05-06 · in Brush (Bo(u)rn(e) RUsty SHell) a POSIX and Bash-Compatible Shell in Rust
  16. …a taxonomy of 5 categories of config languages, which is a bit different Survey of Config Languages https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Survey-of-Config-... Languages for String Data Languages for Typed Data Programmable String-ish…
    comment by chubot · 2025-04-12 · in Levels of configuration languages
  17. …- all these languages lack GC! [2] Survey of Config Languages - https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Survey-of-Config-... - divides this category into 5 tiers: 1. Languages for String Data 2. Languages for Typed Data
    comment by chubot · 2025-03-17 · in From Languages to Language Sets
  18. …by oguz saying "It's not actually my problem either, I'm not invested in osh.". (not actual quotes: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/issues/1881#issuecomme... ) The bug is that osh leaves the script fd open for the child process when…
    comment by akovaski · 2025-02-02 · in Tools for 2025
  19. …more YSH also has a bunch of users that are providing great feedback, and helping to make it stable https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Contributing [1] https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Alternative-Shell...
    comment by chubot · 2025-02-02 · in Tools for 2025
  20. …Bash is well-maintained, you can have a bug fixed quickly. It's been months since I reported this < https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/issues/2068 > and still nothing.
    comment by oguz-ismail · 2025-02-02 · in Tools for 2025
  21. …for distros, web browsers, and compilers: Feature Detection Is Better than Version Detection - https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Feature-Detection... Version/name detection is why Chrome and IE pretend to be Mozilla, and why Clang…
    comment by chubot · 2024-12-28 · in Fish 4.0: The Fish of Theseus
  22. …with namespaces (use mymodule.ysh), buffered I/O that's not slow, etc. Gradually upgrading - https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Gradually-Upgradi... (people are writing new YSH, but not many people have gradually upgraded, so I'd…
    comment by chubot · 2024-12-08 · in Biggest shell programs
  23. ▲ 259
    Biggest shell programs
    story by todsacerdoti · 2024-12-07 · 123 comments
  24. …I appreciate whenever an open source project links to similar ones (FWIW my own contribution is https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Alternative-Shell... )
    comment by chubot · 2024-11-20 · in Show HN: Retry a command with exponential backoff and jitter (+ Starlark exprs)
  25. …Haskell and OCaml shell projects on this wiki page, which is editable: Internal DSLs for Shell - https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Internal-DSLs-for... and ones in many other languages like Scheme and Lisp e.g.…
    comment by chubot · 2024-10-03 · in A Tour of Hell – Shell scripting Haskell dialect
  26. ▲ 3
    Survey of Config Languages
    story by networked · 2024-09-29 · 1 comment
  27. Here is a nice list: https://github.com/oils-for-unix/oils/wiki/Alternative-Shell...
    comment by sea-gold · 2024-09-18 · in The Dune Shell
  28. …or anyone else thinks it's easy, please feel free to contact me / play around with the code, etc. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Where-Contributors-Have... [1] our unit test coverage is reported at 83% or so, but we favor "exterior"…
    comment by chubot · 2024-07-17 · in Optimizing a bignum library for fun
  29. …This is a very self-contained project: the interface is defined by 200 lines of Python: https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/mycpp/mops.py and the trivial 64-bit overflowing implementation is also about 200 lines:…
    comment by chubot · 2024-07-17 · in Optimizing a bignum library for fun
  30. …to work. --- Here is a pure Python 3 implementation of the recv() side of FANOS in only ~100 lines https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/client/py_fanos.... It uses the recvmsg() binding . I'm pretty sure node.js has that too? i.e.…
    comment by chubot · 2024-07-06 · in The Software Crisis
  31. …https://www.oilshell.org/blog/tags.html?tag=headless#headles... More links here - https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Interactive-Shell - some interesting (inactive) projects like Xiki If you find the need for a compatible shell that's div
    comment by chubot · 2024-07-06 · in The Software Crisis
  32. Some related references (on a somewhat messy wiki page) - https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Compact-AST-Representat... Feel free to add others
    comment by chubot · 2024-05-03 · in The life and times of an Abstract Syntax Tree
  33. …which has led to many concrete changes. So your experience can definitely influence the language! https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Where-To-Send-Feedback
    comment by chubot · 2024-04-04 · in Autoconf makes me think we stopped evolving too soon
  34. A better solution is just to write a plain ass shell script that tests if various C snippets compile. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/configure https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/build/detect-pwe... Not an unholy mix…
    comment by chubot · 2024-04-04 · in Autoconf makes me think we stopped evolving too soon
  35. …to support in Oils. --- Oils also uses Unix domain sockets already for the headless shell protocol https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Headless-Mode We could do something like dgsh, but so far I haven't seen a lot of uptake / demand.…
    comment by chubot · 2024-03-10 · in Pipexec – Handling pipe of commands like a single command
  36. …and so forth. I find this layering really does make it scale better for bigger projects https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/asdl/NINJA_subgr... Some more description - https://lobste.rs/s/qnb7xt/ninja_is_enough_build_system#c_tu...…
    comment by chubot · 2024-03-03 · in Show HN: Hancho – A simple and pleasant build system in ~500 lines of Python
  37. SEEKING VOLUNTEERS - https://www.oilshell.org/ - https://github.com/oilshell/oil/ I'm looking for people to help fill out the "standard library" for Oils/YSH. We're implementing a shell for Python and JavaScript programmers who avoid…
    comment by chubot · 2024-02-01 · in Ask HN: Looking for a project to volunteer on? (February 2024)
  38. …/ internal DSLs in nearly all Lisps, and nearly all statically typed functional languages here: https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Internal-DSLs-for-Shell e.g. points to another Haskell project, which may be old -…
    comment by chubot · 2023-11-25 · in Shh: Simple Shell Scripting from Haskell
  39. …sure the GC can follow the resulting pointers in C++, with field inheritance, vtable pointers, etc. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/mycpp/examples/c...
    comment by chubot · 2023-11-15 · in I accidentally a scheme
  40. …out that osh wiki has a list of all sorts of alternative shells if you like this kind of stuff: https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Alternative-Shells
    comment by zokier · 2023-10-23 · in Object SHell
  41. FWIW this wiki page I started may help frame discussions like this: Survey of Config Languages - https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Survey-of-Config-Langua... It puts a bunch of languages in 5 cateogires. Terraform is at least not a YAML…
    comment by chubot · 2023-09-04 · in DSLs are a waste of time
  42. ▲ 48
    Alternative Shells
    story by sdht0 · 2023-08-24 · 10 comments
  43. …it does (e.g. a bunch of mkdir and touch commands and output), we can copy it in our spec tests: https://github.com/oilshell/oil/tree/master/spec https://www.oilshell.org/release/0.17.0/test/spec.wwz/osh-py... and then implement it.…
    comment by chubot · 2023-08-11 · in Oils 0.17.0 – YSH Is Becoming Real
  44. …déjà vu on this comment, but if it is real it is because I truly like the goals set out for oil. ² https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/How-To-Test-OSH
    comment by JNRowe · 2023-08-11 · in Oils 0.17.0 – YSH Is Becoming Real
  45. …at the bottom of this article (which I appreciate because it actually has code and measurements!) https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Compact-AST-Representat...
    comment by chubot · 2023-07-02 · in Flattening ASTs and other compiler data structures
  46. …could finally move on from writing bespoke completion protocols for every new shell language. [0] https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Shellac-Protocol-Propos...
    comment by fbdab103 · 2023-05-21 · in Show HN: Trogon – An automatic TUI for command line apps
  47. …One day we'll do much better. [2] [1] https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2022/03/backlog-arch.html [2] https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Alternative-Shells
    comment by cben · 2023-05-03 · in Ask HN: Why is bash a popular scripting language?
  48. …to help people understand what the goal is, and would be a good introduction to the project. https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki
    comment by Arcuru · 2023-03-17 · in Oil 0.14.2 – Interactive Shell, and Conceding to autoconf
  49. …the code and join Zulip. On most Linux distros you can get a working bin/osh in about 30 seconds: https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Contributing The code is in great shape, and completely different than it was 6 months ago. Especially…
    comment by chubot · 2023-02-09 · in Ask HN: Are alternative (oil, nu, etc.) shells usable as daily drivers?
  50. …wants to understand Oil a bit better, I found that the best intro is actually the Github wiki: https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki
    comment by Arcuru · 2023-02-09 · in Shells are two things