Slashdot Log In
Microsoft's new CLI
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Fri Oct 31, 2003 09:33 AM
from the everybody-loves-the-cli dept.
from the everybody-loves-the-cli dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Months ago a story ran regarding a job advert at Microsoft for a developer role to lead the work on a new generation of command line interface.
It has now been disclosed at the PDC and its name is MSH (Microsoft SHell), codenamed MONAD.
Here is the best description so far."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
so, when will we see GNU's version (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so, when will we see GNU's version (Score:3, Funny)
Re:so, when will we see GNU's version (Score:5, Insightful)
The more microsoft morphs to become like linux, the less people will be inclined to throw away their money when they can get better functionality for free.
Parent
Re:so, when will we see GNU's version (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:so, when will we see GNU's version (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
MSH? (Score:5, Funny)
Daniel
Re:MSH? (Score:5, Funny)
I was working in the lab late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For my monster from his slab began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise
He did the MSH
He did the Microsoft MSH
The monster MSH
It was a graveyard SSH
He did the MSH
It caught on in a flash
He did the MSH
He did the Microsoft MSH
Parent
editor??? (Score:4, Funny)
let's imagine a typical user session:
Parent
hah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, this is a wonderful thing. The shell has been one of the most lacking areas under Windows. I don't know how many times I've dropped into Cygwin or, before that, wasted time writing little C apps just to do basic bulk renaming operations and the likes.
Any word on whether they'll standardize the environment across all Windows products, or is this likely to be a server product only? Will this be the standard shell replacement, or will we now have command.com, cmd.exe and newthing.exe all living in parallel? I like choices, but Windows apps' ad hoc use of largeley-incompatible command.com and cmd.exe is already a source of pain.
Re:hah. (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, maybe that's why the USPTO's seal looks an awful lot like the elder gods'...
MSH... (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps it should be MSSH?
And I'm not bashing either.
Re:MSH... (Score:5, Funny)
da dum tcsh!
Parent
You don't need eyes to see where they are going. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill Gates, on the launch of XP [wired.com]:
Gates said the release of XP "marked the end of an era, the end of DOS [trexion.com] and also the end of Windows 95." ... Gates informing the crowd that he agreed with Apple's Jobs that Windows 3.1 was a "crummy operating system," and assuring the crowd that he'd soon say that about Windows 95.
Of course, we remember they used the phrase "end of dos" for the launch of windows 95. Funny how they are now saying the same things about XP they said about 3.1, 95, 98 and ME. That's consistency!
Now, do they have consistancy in shells? They have derided their primary shell, DOS. But what of their other scripting efforts? Remember their "Unix Killer" "New Technology (NT)" and their ksh? Korn does!
I knew that Microsoft had licensed a number of tools from MKS so I came to the microphone to tell the speaker that this was not the "real" Korn Shell and that MKS was not even compatible with ksh88. I had no intention of embarrassing him and thought that he would explain the compromises that Microsoft had to make in choosing MKS Korn Shell. Instead, he insisted that I was wrong and that Microsoft had indeed chosen a "real" Korn Shell. [slashdot.org]
Ah yes, so portable it was. While NT is dead, csh and ksh trive themselves and in their free counterparts. No new training is required for bash or pdksh.
For an instant, Bill liked Java [microsoft.com]:
Java is our latest programming tool, and we've got a Java compiler with the highest benchmark feeds, great debugging. Java's -as you know, is a wonderful language, and everybody should have that in their portfolio. (1996)
He tried to make the crowd laugh at Sun in the same speach because he wanted to kill Unix with NT. Where is M$ "java" today?
C# .NET and all look to me like a combination of all the second rate junk they've thrown together in their attempt to emulate and eradicate first rate competitors. "Linux is a Cancer", they say, use our shared source instead. Yeah right.
Oh wait, I see the patterns. EEE, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish followed by "that sucks, buy the new one." You have to be blind to miss it. If you follow the M$ way, you will be constantly sucked for money and time learning their new tweaks.
It's only going to get worse because free software is impossible for them to eat up or beat. Their efforts to stick to their previous marketing plans are wrecked by actually having to compete on merrits and price. This is making them less and less stable. The closed source model can not compete with the free software development model.
Parent
3 months... (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I being cynical when I think this just looks like VB for Consoles?
this has a sister product, you know (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this has a sister product, you know (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
so much for old technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe users will be able to help themself a little bit...
killall DRM && killall clippy && killall klez
-t
Nothing new except overkill (Score:5, Interesting)
One last thing: anything can be mapped to a drive, and drives don't just have to be letters. (Ok, I lied - that was 2) The example I was shown was that the registry was mapped to a drive, and you could navigate it like any other drive, with the results being returned from the commandlet as
The user has been able to map a filesystem to a folder rather than a drive letter since at least Windows 2000, and I think it was possible even under NT4. Nothing new there.
The registry (along with many other things) can be mapped as part of the filesystem fairly easily, as demonstrated by this 264kB DLL file [regxplor.com].
And as for returning search results as
Re:Nothing new except overkill (Score:3, Informative)
Perl (Score:3, Interesting)
Will be interesting to see how the GUI generation get on with a proper scritping language.
MS's CLI preview (Score:5, Funny)
.___
// \
||@@|
|| ||
|\_||
\__/
_||_
It looks like you're trying to run a program. Would you like me to start WINWORD.EXE? [Y/N]
Re:MS's CLI preview (Score:3, Funny)
Re:MS's CLI preview (Score:4, Funny)
In order for the changes you have made to take effect, you must first reboot your computer. Your computer will automatically restart in 5 seconds.
It looks like Monad (c)(tm)(iya) is configured for qwerty keyboards. Should I configure it for azerty? [o/n]
In order for the changes you have made to take effect, you must first reboot your computer. Your computer will automatically restart in 5 seconds.
It looks like the azerty configuration messed up a little a few applications configurations. Should I adjust their configurations? [o/n]
In order for the changes you have made to take effect, you must first reboot your computer. Your computer will automatically restart in 5 seconds.
It looks like the adjustments break a little the Windows(c)(tm)(iya) Registry? Should I replace it with the saved BackUp Registry? [o/n]
In order for the changes you have made to take effect, you must first reboot your computer. Your computer will automatically restart in 5 seconds.
It looks like the saved BackUp Registry is now totally screwed up. Should I try to reboot the PC in order to automagically repair everything? [o/n]
Parent
The Best of All Possible Worlds (Score:5, Interesting)
'Monads' are part of Leibnitz's philosophy [www.ucd.ie], which Voltaire [lucidcafe.com] famously satirised in Candide [literature.org] with the figure of Dr. Pangloss, who resolutely maintained that we live in 'this, the best of all possible worlds' despite a succession of disasters that would convince any sane man that he was wrong.
How very suitable for a Microsoft product.
Re:The Best of All Possible Worlds (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure that's an apropos name for a Microsoft product?
Re:The Best of All Possible Worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
Monads were, essentially, philosiphical atoms or molecules, albiet in a very metaphysical sense.
=Shreak
Parent
Microsoft has come a long way (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently, Microsoft has actually begun to produce command line tools for system operations, controlling your services, networks, policies, and registry from the command prompt. But they still have a long way to go, these features are poorly documented (the policy editor's help lists a subset of all the policies you can edit with it. The KB article on it basically is a copy-paste of the help message, with explanations of the policynames provided), typically cryptic, and still don't provide the full set of features.
They may have come a long way, but they have a long way to go. And remember, this is just playing catchup.
Re:Microsoft has come a long way (Score:5, Informative)
One of Microsoft's design requirements for Windows Server 2003 was that EVERYTHING can be done from the commandline, that the GUI interfaces would have NO functionality that the commandline interface does not.
The Windows
But they still have a long way to go, these features are poorly documented
Here's a list of the command line utilities in Windows Server 2003:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.
Searching on individual names, or typing the name with a "/?" on the command line will yield more documentation.
Here's a link to the root reference for the WMIC utilities which are a little more powerful and easily scripted than the command line utilities:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?u
Parent
Better served by a standard *nix shell (Score:5, Interesting)
Monads are an old philosophical concept (Score:4, Informative)
passing objects (Score:3, Insightful)
Much of this could be done in linux... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know why more people don't actively pursue a modern language for the shell interface. sh script syntax is tortorous. So much easier and maintainable to write perl scripts. So why not use perl from the command line??
psh never really seemed to take off but it let you basically enter a perl debugging session but execute shell commands also. This would basically trump anything msh could muster and also provide the entire universe of CPAN to the shell.
sh is right up there with Makefiles for unix utilities that basically suck but are too entrenched to replace.
think for a moment (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, you don't know. But think for a moment: people have had Perl-like languages since the 1960's. Do you really think you or Microsoft are the first to think that using an object-oriented scripting language is a good idea?
The reason why people use sh syntax is because it is enormously effective. Try expressing something like:in Perl or some other scripting language.
Of course, many people who complain about sh syntax really just don't know how to use it.
For interactive use by skilled users and many scripting tasks, bash/ksh is unbeatable. And for the kinds of scripts where Perl makes sense--you can simply use Perl.
This would basically trump anything msh could muster and also provide the entire universe of CPAN to the shell.
Yes, psh is a better version of what msh is trying to achieve. But, you know, even that's nowhere near good enough to dethrone bash/ksh.
Parent
Re:Very Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
This is going to be for headless servers. So you can ssh into a box and administer it remotely, or through a dumb terminal on a serial port, etc, etc..
There's no good reason your mailserver or each machine in your SQL Server farm needs a GUI.
Parent
Re:Very Nice (Score:5, Funny)
No kidding...that's why we don't use Windows.
Parent
Re:Very Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Very Nice (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Very Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
What if Longhorn does indeed provide more security, not only in default settings, but more inherently in the OpenSource?
Do you think the average developer/manager at MS is dumber than your average OS participant? (This is not a tric.. Damn, I'm falling in myself..)
But really - if "we" are to compete, we will have to steal the ideas that "work" from MS camp, just as they're "stealing" "our" ideas that WORK.
Linux is narrowing the gap to MS on the desktop (albeit slowly), and MS is narrowing the gap to Unix on eg. CLI, stability and security. Their software matures too, you know..
And then there's Apple. They make fun stuff. The are not afraid to invent, and they have the money to launch stuff that the OpenSource movement cannot. I don't quite know where to place them compared to OpenSource and MS.
Parent
Re:Very Nice (Score:3, Funny)
Then we'll finally know that Duke Nukem Forever is about to go gold.
The difference: (Score:5, Informative)
Read down the article for details on how they can now do things like mount the registry as a drive and walk it like a filesystem. Yegads!
bash (or some sh-variant) would have to be adapted to know specific things about linux to compete at that feature level, but it would become non-portable.
This is what the new sysfs interface is supposed to help with. Still, bash isn't object oriented (yet). The closest thing would be like perlsh.
I think people don't give MS enough credit for where they stand even today, frankly.
Parent
Re:Very Nice (Score:3, Interesting)
> just as they're "stealing" "our" ideas that WORK.
Open Source ideas like bash-a-like shells?
If you can name three original ideas that were generated by an open source / free software project rather than being appropriated from Unix, Windows, or MacOS, I'll eat my hat without salt.
Re:Very Nice (Score:3, Funny)
That's a bit of a recurive comment isn't it, what with the glob/regexp "*sh" including "msh" and all? But I suppose it'll go on to pick itself up by its own bootlaces, invent the monopole magnet, debug the rest of Windows and couple of other impossible things before heading off to Milliway's for breakfast.
Re:Very Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you get rated insightful for noting what MS has done in the past, and extrapolating the future of their next products based on that.
What if this shell actually knocks the socks off *sh?
That would be nice.
Keep in mind that this isn't a contest. MS has some very nice features burried in their software, and that's great. If MS Windows is ever a better platform choice than the free operating systems out there, I say great!
Woefully, it will still not be the platform I use. Why? Because I require the ability to fix bugs, apply patches on my own timetable (sometimes so fast that my vendor doesn't even know about them yet), and generally control my systems behavior.
Windows does not give me that.
What if Longhorn does indeed provide more security, not only in default settings, but more inherently in the OpenSource?
Security is not a "thing", it's a process. You don't ship your OS in a box with a "NOW WITH 20% MORE SECURITY" sticker and get more security. Longhorn's security will be poor as long as Microsoft continues to deprioritize it in favor of market share. I see no evidence that that has changed since the days of NT4.
Do you think the average developer/manager at MS is dumber than your average OS participant?
No, of course not. The problem is that the average MS employee is working on what a mid-level manager decided he would be working on, based on a company directive from on high that is motivated mostly by marketting. The reason Open Source software tends to be so much more USEFUL, even when it lacks many seemingly obvious features, is the fact that it's created, maintained and refined by those who need it the most. Shells don't seem all that well designed to developers and manageres... and that's because they're not for developers and managers. They're primarily use by sysadmins. A developer spends most of their time in an editor and/or using a rule-based system like make. The shell is just a tool for odd jobs, and many IDEs and feature-laden editors like emacs and vim pretty much suplant the need to use the shell 90% of the time. Sysadmins do not have that luxury.
Look at the MS shell. It is clearly being designed by developers for developers. The ability to manage excel data from the shell is not something that targets the needs of anyone who will have to use this shell routinely. Why is it there? That sort of thing scares me right off the bat, and tells me that this is not a sysadmin tool. Developers under Windows already have very nice tools in their IDEs to script all sorts of interaction with every part of the system that they need. Managers and desktop workers will never want/need a shell.
So ask yourself, which will be more useful: cygwin's bash port to Windows or msh? I can ssh into my Windows box and do admin today, and it requires no msh at all. Why do I need this beast?
But really - if "we" are to compete, we will have to steal the ideas that "work" from MS camp, just as they're "stealing" "our" ideas that WORK.
No, you don't have to steal anything. First off, let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that anything in a shell is new. Shells have existed for decades that do everything msh is (so far) claiming to do. Most of them died a quick death for lack of use.
Next, the most valuable thing that MS has done in the last few years is to put pressure on other OSes to use features that were long available. For example, MS had a journaling fileysystem. Journaling was not new, it was just kind of hard to get right, and all of the implementations out there were fairly speical purpose or closed source. When MS demonstrated that an end-user OS could indeed benefit from having such a feature, dozens of porojects sprang up to take this long-implemented wheel and re-invent it for open source oses.
This sort of "test environment in the large" is very valuable, and MS has alway
Parent
Re:Very Nice (Score:5, Funny)
Joe Sixpack is an MCSE
Parent
Re:This made me laugh .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure beats the hell out of using obscure grep commands to parse a blob of ascii.
And....the commandlets are developer friendly. You can make a commandlet by inheriting from the commandlet base class, and adding attribute tags to the public properties to make them parameters to the commandlet.
Sounds pretty easy for a developer to extend.
This is a good thing for MS to do. The slashbots are always whining about how MS takes standards and breaks them for it's own gain. Rather than taint your precious bash or perl, they started from scratch.
Parent
Re:This made me laugh .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe they should call back.... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't think a ritual sacrifice counts as lending.
Parent
Re:Favorite comments from the Article: (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Favorite comments from the Article: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Axiom: Everything will be Unix-like (Score:4, Funny)
> Now, if Cygwin would tweak Bash to complete the job before MS, I'd be much happier...
Er, it's already there. A transcript from a Cygwin bash session I just ran:Okay, so I didn't press enter, but I think the point is made.
Parent