Hear me out: A scripting language that compiles to bash or sh (any suggestions?) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by cyclohexane@lemmy.ml to c/programming@programming.dev

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why?

Because bash feels clunky to write and work with for anything non-trivial, especially compared to other scripting languages.

Why not another scripting language (no compile necessary)?

Because bash and sh are installed nearly everywhere. Any other scripting language means the user is required to have that installed, and that is far less likely to be the case.

If I could write my scripts in a nice syntax, but be sure my users will be able to use it effortlessly by distributing to them compiled versions, then that would make both of our lives easier!

Thoughts? Are there any languges that do this?

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[-] dack@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

I don't see why bash would be used at all here. If you want something that doesn't need another interpreter, then just compile a binary.

[-] cyclohexane@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Possible use case: scripts that are found in a codebase for doing... Codebase things. Like setting up dev environment for example.

[-] dack@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

But then building it still requires whatever scripting tool you use. Including the bash-ified version would not for practice, as it wouldn't be very human readable and would have to be kept in sync with the source script. It's much cleaner and simpler to just require python for your build environment.

[-] anzo@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

look into devenv.sh for that constrained use-case

[-] match@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago

That's a use case for Docker

this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023

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