Comment by pzmarzly

This is exactly the frustration that lead me to write Rad [0] (the README leads with an example). I've been working on it for over a year and the goal is basically to offer a programming language specifically for writing CLIs. It aims for declarative args (no Bash ops parsing each time), automatic --help generation, friendly (Python-like) syntax, and it's perfect for dev build scripts. I'll typically have something like this:

    #!/usr/bin/env rad
    ---
    Dev automation script.
    ---

    args:
        build   b bool    # Build the project
        test    t bool    # Run tests
        lint    l bool    # Run linter
        run     r bool    # Start dev server
        release R bool    # Release mode
        filter  f str?    # Test filter pattern

        filter requires test

    if build:
        mode = release ? "--release" : ""
        print("Building ({release ? 'release' : 'debug'})...")
        $`cargo build {mode}`

    if lint:
        print("Linting...")
        $`cargo clippy -- -D warnings`

    if test:
        f = filter ? "-- {filter}" : ""
        print("Running tests{filter ? ' (filter: {filter})' : ''}...")
        $`cargo test {f}`

    if run:
        bin = release ? "target/release/server" : "target/debug/server"
        $`./{bin}`


    Usage: ./dev -b (build), ./dev -blt -f "test_auth" (build, lint, test auth), ./dev -r (just run).

[0] https://github.com/amterp/rad

Well, at least I will be able to run my bash scripts in 5 years

> This is the way. Shell makes for a terrible scripting language, that I start regretting choosing usually around the time I have to introduce the first `if` into my "simple" scripts, or have to do some more complex string manipulation.

I suppose it can be nice if you are already in a JS environment, but wouldn't the author's need be met by just putting their shell commands into a .sh file? This way is more than a little over-engineered with little benefit in return for that extra engineering.

The reasons (provided by the author) for creating a Make.ts file is completely met by popping your commands into a .sh file.

With the added advantage that I don't need to care about what else needs to be installed on the build system when I check out a project.

I just don't see the advantages.

I use swift! I even (re-)wrote swift-sh[0] to make it possible to import external modules in a script (à la uv).

[0] https://github.com/xcode-actions/swift-sh

I've been working a lot in fairly complex shell scripts lately (though not long— not much over 1000 lines). Some of them are little programs that run locally, and others drive a composable cloud-init module for Terraform that lets lets users configure various features of EC2 hosts on multiple Linux distribution without writing any shell scripts themselves or relying on any configuration management framework beyond cloud-init itself. With the right tooling, it's not as bad as you'd think.

For both scripts, everything interesting is installed via Nix, so there's little reliance on special casing various distros', built-in package managers.

In both cases, all scripts have to pass ShellCheck to "build". They can't be deployed or committed with obvious parse errors or ambiguities around quoting or typos in variable names.

In the case of the scripts that are tools for developers, the Bash interpreter, coreutils, and all external commands are provided by Nix, which hardcodws their full path into the scripts. The scripts don't care if you're on Linux or macOS— they don't even care what's on your PATH (or if it's empty). They embrace "modern" Bash features and use whatever CLI tools provide the most readable interface.

Is it my favorite language? No. But it often has the best ROI, and portability and most gotchas are solved pretty well if you know what tools to use, especially if your scripts are simple.

A lesson I learnt during the 90's already switching into Perl instead, somehow people keep writing pieces of wonder in plain shell scripts.

Agreed. The shell is great for chaining together atomic operations on plaintext. That is to say, it is great for one liners doing that. The main reason probably isn't how it all operates on plain text but how easy it makes it to start processes, do process substitution, redirections, etc.

As soon as you have state accumulating somewhere, branching or loops it becomes chaotic too quickly.

I generally use AWK as my scripting language, or often just write the whole thing directly in AWK. It doesn't change, is always installed on all POSIX platforms, easily interfaces with the command line, and is an easy to learn small language.