485 lines
23 KiB
Markdown
485 lines
23 KiB
Markdown
+++
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title = "The Modern CLI Renaissance"
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date = 2024-09-04T12:20:02-06:00
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draft = false
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+++
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<!--
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tool,link,year,language
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ls,,1961,c
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cat,,1971,c
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cd,,1971,c
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cp,,1971,c
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man,,1971,c
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rm,,1971,c
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grep,,1973,c
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diff,,1974,c
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sed,,1974,c
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bc,,1975,c
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make,,1976,c
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vi,,1976,c
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TeX,,1978,pascal
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bourne shell,,1979,c
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awk,,1985,c
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screen,,1987,c
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bash,https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/,1989,c
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zsh,https://www.zsh.org/,1990,c
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vim,https://www.vim.org/,1991,c
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midnight commander,,1994,c
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ssh,,1995,c
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curl,https://github.com/curl/curl,1996,c
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fish,https://fishshell.com/,2005,c++ (currently being rewritten in rust)
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fossil,https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki,2006,c
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tmux,https://github.com/tmux/tmux,2007,c
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git,https://git-scm.com/,2008,c
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the silver searcher,https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher,2011,c
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jq,https://github.com/jqlang/jq,2012,c
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go 1.0,https://go.dev/,2012,go
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fzf,https://github.com/junegunn/fzf,2013,go
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eza/exa,https://github.com/eza-community/eza,2014,rust
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neovim,https://neovim.io/,2015,c
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pueue,https://github.com/Nukesor/pueue,2015,rust
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rust 1.0,https://www.rust-lang.org/,2015,rust
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just,https://github.com/casey/just,2016,rust
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micro,https://micro-editor.github.io/,2016,go
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nnn,https://github.com/jarun/nnn,2016,c
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ripgrep,https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep,2016,rust
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fd,https://github.com/sharkdp/fd,2017,rust
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bat,https://github.com/sharkdp/bat,2018,rust
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broot,https://dystroy.org/broot/,2018,rust
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difftastic,https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/,2018,rust
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hyperfine,https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine,2018,rust
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lazygit,https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit,2018,go
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lsd,https://github.com/lsd-rs/lsd,2018,rust
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nushell,https://www.nushell.sh/,2018,rust
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scc,https://github.com/boyter/scc,2018,go
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sd,https://github.com/chmln/sd,2018,rust
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git-delta,https://github.com/dandavison/delta,2019,rust
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bottom,https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom,2019,rust
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grex,https://github.com/pemistahl/grex,2019,rust
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starship,https://starship.rs/,2019,rust
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tre,https://github.com/dduan/tre,2019,rust
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typst,https://typst.app/,2019,rust
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diskonaut,https://github.com/imsnif/diskonaut,2020,rust
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helix,https://helix-editor.com/,2020,rust
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duf,https://github.com/muesli/duf,2020,go
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pijul,https://pijul.org/,2020,rust
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zellij,https://zellij.dev/,2020,rust
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zoxide,https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide,2020,rust
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btop,https://github.com/aristocratos/btop,2021,c++
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ast-grep,https://github.com/ast-grep/ast-grep,2022,rust
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yazi,https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi,2024,rust
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-->
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<!--
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open tmp.csv |
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sort-by year tool |
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update tool {|i| if ($i.link != "") {$"[($i.tool)]\(($i.link)\)"} else {$i.tool}} |
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select tool year language |
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to md |
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xsel -bi
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-->
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<!--
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ls specifically can trace its history to 1961
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-->
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Over the past few years, it seems like the rate at which new CLI tools are being written has picked back up again,
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accelerating after seeing relatively little activity between ~1995 and ~2015.
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I'd like to talk about this trend I've noticed,
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where people are rewriting and rethinking staples of the command line interface,
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why I think this trend might be happening,
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and why I think this trend is a good thing.
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## History
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The terminal and the command line interface have been staples of computer user interfaces before computer monitors were even available,
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with some of the first computers offering an interactive mode in the late 1950s.
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The recognizable Linux terminal traces its linage to the very first version of Unix in 1971.
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Many utilities that a Linux user interacts with every day,
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commands like `rm`, `cat`, `cd`, `cp`, `man`, and a host of other core commands trace their initial versions to this first version of Unix.
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Other tools are a bit newer, such as `sed` (1974), `diff` (1974) `bc` (1975), `make` (1976), or `vi` (1976).
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There were a few more tools introduced in the '90s, such as `vim` (1991) and `ssh` (1995), but you get the picture.
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The majority of the foundational CLI tools on a Linux pc, even one installed yesterday, are older than Linux itself is.
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## Ok, so?
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Now, there's nothing wrong with this.
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The tools still work fine, but in the half-century since they were first written,
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terminals and the broader Linux ecosystem have all changed.
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Terminals now have capacity to display more colours, Unicode symbols, and even inline images.
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Terminal programs now coexist with graphical user interfaces,
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and only a small subset of computer users even know they exist,
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whereas in the past, terminals were the only way one interacted with the computer.
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These changes to the environment surrounding CLI apps in recent years have
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led to a resurgence in development of command line utilities.
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Instead of just developing completely new tools or cloning old tools,
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I've noticed that people are rethinking and reinventing tools that have existed since the early days of Unix.
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This isn't just some compulsive need to rewrite every tool out there in your favorite language.
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People are looking at the problem these tools set out to solve,
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and coming up with their own solutions to them,
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exploring the space of possible solutions and taking new approaches.
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Its this exploration of the solution space that id like to take a look at:
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the ways that tools are changing,
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why people are changing them,
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and what kicked off this phenomenon.
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## The lessons learned from the past
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A large amount of the innovation in the area, I think,
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can be attributed to lessons that have been learned in 50 years of using software:
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sharp edges we have repeatedly cut ourselves on,
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unintuitive interfaces that repeatedly trip us up,
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and growing frustration at the limitations that maintaining decades of backwards compatibility imposes on our tools.
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These lessons have been gathering in the collective conciousness;
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through cheatsheets, guides, and FAQs;
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resources to guide us through esoteric error messages, complex configurations, and dozens upon dozens of flags.
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Id like to go over a couple of the more prominent lessons that I feel terminal tools have learned in the past several decades.
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### A good out of the box experience
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While configurability is great,
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one should not need to learn a new configuration language and dozens or hundreds of options to get a usable piece of software.
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Configuration should be for customization, not setup.
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One of the earliest examples of this principle may be the fish shell.
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Both zsh and fish have powerful prompt and autocompletion engines,
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but zsh requires you to setup a custom prompt and enable completions in order to use the features that set it apart from the competition.
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With no config file, zsh is no better than bash.
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When starting fish for the first time, however,
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its powerful autocompletion and information rich prompt are front and center with no configuration required.
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Of course, fish still has the same level of configurability as zsh, it just also has sensible defaults.
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To demonstrate my point, this is the default prompt for zsh with no configuration.
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It *only* shows the hostname, none of the advanced features you can get out of a zsh prompt even without plugins.
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![zsh prompt, only shows hostname](zsh-prompt.png)
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Here is bash's prompt.
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It actually gives more info than zsh's, even though zsh can do more when properly configured.
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![bash prompt, shows hostname and current directory](bash-prompt.png)
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And here is fish's default prompt.
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It has a few colours, shows everything the bash prompt does, and additionally shows the git branch we are on.
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![fish prompt, has colours, shows hostname, current directory, and git info](fish-prompt.png)
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Text editors are another great example of the evolution of out of the box defaults.
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Vim and Neovim both improved on their predecessors,
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but much of that improvement is locked behind extremely complex configuration experiences and plugins.
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Here's four different terminal text editors with no configuration applied:
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![vi, vim, neovim, and helix editors in their default
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configuration](editors.png)
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Vi, (top left) is our baseline, and, as far as I can tell, doesn't actually
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support much for configuration. What you see out of the box is more or less
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whats there.
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Vim (top right) greatly improved on Vi, adding things such as syntax highlighting, line numbers, spellchecking, split windows, folding, and even basic autocompletion.
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However, everything but syntax highlighting is either extremely clunky or outright disabled without configuration.
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For example, the earliest things I did when I first made a `.vimrc` was to enable indent folding,
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make some better keybinds for navigating windows, and adding a line number ruler to the side.
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Neovim (bottom left) further improved on Vim, adding support for Treesitter and the Language Server Protocol,
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but the out of the box experience is the *exact* same as vim!
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In order to take advantage of the LSP and Treesitter support, you have to install plugins,
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which means learning a Nvim package manager, learning how to configure LSPs,
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and configuring a new LSP for every language you want to use it with
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or finding out about Mason and being OK with having multiple levels of package management in your Nvim install alone.
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Don't get me wrong: Neovim is a great editor once you get over the hump.
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I still use it as my daily driver, but so much of its functionality is simply hidden.
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Then we have the Helix (bottom right) editor.
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Slightly glaring default colour scheme aside, everything is just *there*.
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Helix doesn't have plugin support [yet](https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/3806),
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but it has so much stuff in core that,
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looking through my neovim plugins,
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pretty much all of them are in the core editor!
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Ironically, the one feature that I feel helix is missing, [folding](https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/1840),
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is a core part of neovim, albeit one that requires some configuration to get good use out of.
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Helix does have a config file where you can change a huge amount of settings,
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but its an extremely usable IDE out of the box thanks to having all of its features enabled by default.
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### Helpful error messages
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When the user does do something wrong, it is vital to let them know exactly what, where, and how it went wrong,
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and if at all possible, what action the user can do to fix it.
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`Operation Failed`, `Error` or `syntax error` on their own are horrible error messages.
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They tell you that something *somewhere* failed, giving almost no information the user can use to troubleshoot.
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In the worst case, they can even point you in a completely different direction than what is actually needed to fix things.
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Git is a good example of this. As much as I love git, sometimes its error messages are the opposite of helpful.
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To borrow an example from [Julia Evans](https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/04/10/notes-on-git-error-messages/#git-checkout-asdf),
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if you run `git checkout SomeNonExistantBranch`, you get:
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`error: pathspec 'SomeNonexistantBranch' did not match any file(s) known to git`.
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This is confusing because you are trying to checkout a branch, you arent thinking about files.
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Another example, I covered [before](../nushell) is the contrast between Bash and Nushell.
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Consider the following script:
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{{<highlight console "linenos=false">}}
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$ for i in $(ls -l | tr -s " " | cut --fields=5 --delimiter=" "); do
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echo "$i / 1000" | bc
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done
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{{</highlight>}}
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This gets the sizes of all the files in KiB. But what if we typo the cut field?
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{{<highlight console "linenos=false">}}
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$ for i in $(ls -l | tr -s " " | cut --fields=6 --delimiter=" "); do
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echo "$i / 1000" | bc
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done
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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(standard_in) 1: syntax error
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{{</highlight>}}
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Due to the syntax error coming from bc rather than bash directly,
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even the line number it gives you is misleading,
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and in order to have the slightest clue whats going on,
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you have to start print debugging.
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The equivalent in nushell would be:
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{{<highlight console "linenos=false">}}
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> ls | get size | each {|item| $item / 1000}
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{{</highlight>}}
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and the equivilant error would be:
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{{<highlight console "linenos=false">}}
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> ls | get type | each {|item| $item / 1000}
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Error: nu::shell::eval_block_with_input
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× Eval block failed with pipeline input
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╭─[entry #5:1:1]
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1 │ ls | get type | each {|item| $item / 1000}
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· ─┬
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· ╰── source value
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╰────
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Error: nu::shell::type_mismatch
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× Type mismatch during operation.
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╭─[entry #5:1:30]
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1 │ ls | get type | each {|item| $item / 1000}
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· ──┬── ┬ ──┬─
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· │ │ ╰── int
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· │ ╰── type mismatch for operator
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· ╰── string
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╰────
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{{</highlight>}}
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Though the first error isnt helpful, the second one tells us right away that `$item` is not what we expect it to be,
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hopefully pointing us to the `get type` mistake.
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Nushell's error messages are miles ahead of other shells just...
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being useful, helping you find where you made an error,
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rather than just telling you theres an error *somewhere*.
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### Concise and discoverable documentation
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In my Nvim config, I use [which-key](https://github.com/folke/which-key.nvim),
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a plugin that displays available keybindings as you type.
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I've been using vim for almost a decade, including a long time without which-key,
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so its not like I never learned the keybindings, but I still find which-key useful.
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Why is that, you may ask?
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Well, because even though I use (n)vim every day, I don't use all the keybindings every day.
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I might go months between using, for example, `dap` (delete current paragraph), or `C-w x` (swap current window for next).
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Naturally, when you go months without using certain parts of a program, you tend to forget they exist.
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Which-key solves that handily, by offering quick, non-intrusive reminders of what is available.
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Here's what my which-key config looks like:
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![Which-key.nvim, showing contextual key hints](nvim-which-key.png)
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Now, which-key and its like have been around for a while,
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but other TUI programs have integrated contextual hints without the need for a plugin.
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The two that I am aware of are zellij and helix.
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![Helix's contextual hint](helix-contextual-hint.png)
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Helix both has autocompletion for its built in command line and a contextual hint that appears when you press the first key in a multi key combo.
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This drastically helps both new and experienced users learn and remember keybinds without making the editor any less powerful.
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![Zellij's hint bar](zellij-hints.png)
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Zellij has a bottom bar displaying keybindings available in the current mode.
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This has proven invaluable for me, as I don't use a terminal multiplexer much
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(On GUI systems, I use the window manager for managing multiple terminals), and as such tend to forget the keybinds.
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Though it does take up screen space, and a person who used Zellij every day would most likely disable it,
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the hints bar is more than worth it for new and occasional users.
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### Common usecases should be easy
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Where possible, documentation should not even be required for the most common use cases.
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Whenever I want to use `find`, I almost always have to first look at the man page,
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as I don't use it quite often enough to memorize it.
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But that's totally unneeded! 90% of my uses of `find` take the form of `find ./ -name "*foo*"`.
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With [fd](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd), the exact same invocation is a simple `fd foo`, dead simple, no man page needed.
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Of course, 10% of the time I'm doing something else and have to look at the manual even with fd,
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but the point is that manuals are for when you want to do something with the tool that is not the most common usecase.
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There are many other examples as well. How many of your grep invocations are in the form of `grep -R 'foo' ./`?
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Most of mine are. [Ripgrep](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep) shortens that to `rg foo`
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while still having all the power of grep when I need it, and it is faster as well!
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This isn't to say that tools should 'dumb themselves down' or hobble themselves to make them easier to use.
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However they should keep in mind the most common usecase that their tool is likely to be used in,
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and streamline that usecase.
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## Shedding historical baggage
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Many tools were made for one thing, and over time have evolved into another thing entirely.
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This can happen by conscious design or, more commonly,
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from an industry or community picking a tool up and using it for something it was not originally designed for.
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While hacking tools for uses they were not designed for is always fun and in many cases the only way to do something,
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its perhaps better to make a dedicated tool when the design choices made for the old usecases start hindering the new usecases.
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A great example of this is [just](https://github.com/casey/just), a command runner heavily inspired by GNU make.
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Make was (and in large part still is) a C build system.
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As such, it includes features such as implicit rules
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(if a file called `foo.o` is needed and there is no explicit rule is there, the C compiler will be invoked on the file `foo.c`
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(there are similar rules for C++ and linking))
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and file modification time laziness
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(fantastic for a build system, needs liberal sprinkling of `.PHONY` rules when used as a task runner).
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These features are *good* features when make is being used as a build system,
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but another major use of make that has emerged has been as a way to run common tasks.
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So alongside `make build` to build your program, you would have `make bootstrap`, `make test`, `make config`, etc.
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This is where the design decisions behind make the build system start to hinder make the task runner,
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making one learn about make the build system in order to work around those features to use make the task runner.
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However, make cant drop these features, both because projects still actively use make as a build system,
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and because even makefiles that are just used as taskrunners still work around the footguns and
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would be broken by make making large changes to its syntax and semantics.
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However, Just was designed from the outset to be a command runner, and as a result,
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it is much easier to pick up the just language and make a quick set of commands that can be run.
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By leaving behind the old tool, a new tool can be made that better fits the tasks that people use the tool for.
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## The languages
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Another thing I've noticed is that while the language of choice for CLI tools used to be C,
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More recent tooling has been dominated by Rust and Go.
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Of course, there are exceptions to the pattern.
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TeX was written in pascal, Neovim kept C as its primary language,
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and there is the occasional new tool written in C or C++.
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But there is still a clear pattern in the language choice for newly written tools.
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Now, why do you think that pattern has changed?
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And have these new languages led to an increase in the number of tools being written?
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I think so, and I don't actually think its the languages itself, so much as the libraries surrounding them.
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Both Rust and Go have healthy package ecosystems surrounding interaction with the terminal.
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Rust has Clap for argument parsing,
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crossterm for dealing with ANSI escape codes and other terminal interaction,
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and Ratatui for making TUIs.
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Go has a similar set of tools, with Cobra for CLI argument parsing,
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Viper for config file management integrated with Cobra,
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Gocui, tview, and Termui for TUIs,
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or Bubbletea for pretty UI components.
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These libraries combined with the extra ergonomics offered by the languages themselves,
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make the barrier to entry lower,
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allowing for more people to experiment with the design and ergonomics of CLI tools.
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## Conclusion
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> If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
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-- Isaac Newton, 1675
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Once again, Id like to state that I am not advocating for shiny new tools *because* they are shiny and new.
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Likewise, I dont think the old tools are *bad*, nor does their age alone count against them.
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However, new tools have the opportunity to learn from their predecessors and build upon them.
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In this way, the new tools are a tribute to those tools that came before;
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||
a recognition of their strengths, an acknowledgement of their weaknesses.
|
||
|
||
Now, these new tools are not the be-all end-all of the command line interface.
|
||
Just because this new generation of tools improve on the old ones,
|
||
it does not mean they are themselves perfect.
|
||
As we use these tools, we will become familiar with them,
|
||
and we will discover their sharp edges,
|
||
or their common usecase will change,
|
||
or we develop a new usecase entirely.
|
||
And when these things happen, we will develop yet another generation of tools,
|
||
one further polished and adapted to new usecases.
|
||
|
||
## Appendix: the tools
|
||
|
||
This is an extremely unscientific table of command line tools that I have tried, have used, or currently use.
|
||
It is assuredly incomplete, but *should* be broadly representative.
|
||
The date data has been gathered from the first git commit where available,
|
||
wikipedia otherwise, and sorting is by year first, then alphabetical.
|
||
|
||
|tool|year|language|
|
||
|-|-|-|
|
||
|ls|1961|c|
|
||
|cat|1971|c|
|
||
|cd|1971|c|
|
||
|cp|1971|c|
|
||
|man|1971|c|
|
||
|rm|1971|c|
|
||
|grep|1973|c|
|
||
|diff|1974|c|
|
||
|sed|1974|c|
|
||
|bc|1975|c|
|
||
|make|1976|c|
|
||
|vi|1976|c|
|
||
|TeX|1978|pascal|
|
||
|bourne shell|1979|c|
|
||
|awk|1985|c|
|
||
|screen|1987|c|
|
||
|[bash](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/)|1989|c|
|
||
|[zsh](https://www.zsh.org/)|1990|c|
|
||
|[vim](https://www.vim.org/)|1991|c|
|
||
|midnight commander|1994|c|
|
||
|ssh|1995|c|
|
||
|[curl](https://github.com/curl/curl)|1996|c|
|
||
|[fish](https://fishshell.com/)|2005|c++ (currently being rewritten in rust)|
|
||
|[fossil](https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki)|2006|c|
|
||
|[tmux](https://github.com/tmux/tmux)|2007|c|
|
||
|[git](https://git-scm.com/)|2008|c|
|
||
|[the silver searcher](https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher)|2011|c|
|
||
|[go 1.0](https://go.dev/)|2012|go|
|
||
|[jq](https://github.com/jqlang/jq)|2012|c|
|
||
|[fzf](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf)|2013|go|
|
||
|[eza/exa](https://github.com/eza-community/eza)|2014|rust|
|
||
|[neovim](https://neovim.io/)|2015|c|
|
||
|[pueue](https://github.com/Nukesor/pueue)|2015|rust|
|
||
|[rust 1.0](https://www.rust-lang.org/)|2015|rust|
|
||
|[just](https://github.com/casey/just)|2016|rust|
|
||
|[micro](https://micro-editor.github.io/)|2016|go|
|
||
|[nnn](https://github.com/jarun/nnn)|2016|c|
|
||
|[ripgrep](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep)|2016|rust|
|
||
|[fd](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd)|2017|rust|
|
||
|[bat](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat)|2018|rust|
|
||
|[broot](https://dystroy.org/broot/)|2018|rust|
|
||
|[difftastic](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/)|2018|rust|
|
||
|[hyperfine](https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine)|2018|rust|
|
||
|[lazygit](https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit)|2018|go|
|
||
|[lsd](https://github.com/lsd-rs/lsd)|2018|rust|
|
||
|[nushell](https://www.nushell.sh/)|2018|rust|
|
||
|[scc](https://github.com/boyter/scc)|2018|go|
|
||
|[sd](https://github.com/chmln/sd)|2018|rust|
|
||
|[bottom](https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom)|2019|rust|
|
||
|[git-delta](https://github.com/dandavison/delta)|2019|rust|
|
||
|[grex](https://github.com/pemistahl/grex)|2019|rust|
|
||
|[starship](https://starship.rs/)|2019|rust|
|
||
|[tre](https://github.com/dduan/tre)|2019|rust|
|
||
|[typst](https://typst.app/)|2019|rust|
|
||
|[diskonaut](https://github.com/imsnif/diskonaut)|2020|rust|
|
||
|[duf](https://github.com/muesli/duf)|2020|go|
|
||
|[helix](https://helix-editor.com/)|2020|rust|
|
||
|[pijul](https://pijul.org/)|2020|rust|
|
||
|[zellij](https://zellij.dev/)|2020|rust|
|
||
|[zoxide](https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide)|2020|rust|
|
||
|[btop](https://github.com/aristocratos/btop)|2021|c++|
|
||
|[ast-grep](https://github.com/ast-grep/ast-grep)|2022|rust|
|
||
|[yazi](https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi)|2024|rust|
|