Comment by kh_hk
Comment by kh_hk 5 days ago
Well, at least I will be able to run my bash scripts in 5 years
Comment by kh_hk 5 days ago
Well, at least I will be able to run my bash scripts in 5 years
I've been using node for a decade now and I've had to update NPM libraries a number of times as Node itself upgraded. I have a feeling it will get a lot more stable with ESM and the maturity of the language but if you're writing something you need to run 5-10yrs from now I wouldn't touch a library unless it's simple and has few of it's own dependencies.
Fair. My bash scripts only broke 3 times over the years:
- when ls started quoting filenames with spaces (add -N)
- when perl stopped being installed by default in CentOS and AlmaLinux (had to add dnf install -y perl)
- when egrep alias disappeared (use grep -E)
>- when ls started quoting filenames with spaces (add -N)
Your fault: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs
Bash is not a great cross-platform choice. Too many subtle differences.
The best way is a scripting language with locked-down dependency spec inside the script. Weirdly .NET is leading the way here.
python does EOL releases after 5 years. I guess versions are readily available for downloading and running with uv, but at that point you are on your own.
bash is glue and for me, glue code must survive the passage of time. The moment you use a high-level language for glue code it stops being glue code.
Hard disagree... I find that Deno shebangs and using fixed version dependencies to be REALLY reliable... I mean Deno 3 may come along and some internals may break, but that should have really limited side effects.
Aside: I am somewhat disappointed that the @std guys don't (re)implement some of the bits that are part of Deno or node compatibility in a consistent way, as it would/could/should be more stable over time.
I like Deno/TS slightly more because my package/library and version can be called directly in the script I'm executing, not a separate .csproj file.
How is any of that a subtle difference between platforms?
The tools you will call from your bash script differ in subtle ways between Linux, macOS, MinGW.
One good example is `uuidgen`
>uuidgen
That's neither a standard CLI utility nor a bash builtin.
Technically maybe, I don't know. But in practice, your bash will use tools like this and break if they are different / missing on a future build host.
If using a programming language with locked-down package dependencies, then all you need is the compiler/interpreter and your script will work.
I don't know Ruby, but chances are that your Python/JavaScript scripts are going to run in 5 years as well, if you stick to standard library.