Post #2270211

2026-04-09 23:37 UTC

@ska@social.treehouse.systems @mia@shrimptest.0x0.st The scripting language 'execline' is really strange, it's not as strange as the one that nix came up with, but it's pretty strange. I just find it existentially unpleasant to work in. Okay the standard shell is kind of a security nightmare, but couldn't it have used for example a lisp derivative which would be comparatively sane. Or maybe Postscript? Smalltalk?

Replies (1)

@ska@social.treehouse.systems 2026-04-09 23:42

@resuna@ohai.social @mia@shrimptest.0x0.st I can't believe I'm still hearing this in 2026, to be honest. Will that misperception ever die? You do not need to write your run scripts in execline. You never have, and you never will. You can write your run scripts in any scripting language you want. You can even make your run "scripts" compiled executables, if you like. Most people use /bin/sh as the interpreter for their run scripts, and it's totally fine. s6 (more accurately, s6-rc) uses execline internally because execline is better than sh for automated script generation, but you never have to see it. You can use s6 and pretend execline doesn't exist. You can even build s6 without execline, it's not recommended, but it's possible. I don't know what more I can do at this point.

Open ##2270212