[zadjii]

cmd is parked for pretty much everything except for major issues. It's a scary codebase that has a LOT of code that's dependent on it, and we can't really add any new features there without the possibility of breaking someone.

This feature is mostly focused on the other end of the communication, on being able to create new Terminal windows to run shells inside of them.

[elFarto]

Any chance that you could just fork it? Create cmd2.exe, hell you could even open-source it.

[oblio]

Is the pay-off big enough? Who knows what garbage code they might want to hide in there, for both technical reasons (including security) or even legal ones.

[llampx]

Isn't that basically Powershell?

[paulie_a]

Is there a chance this will be connected to a functional shell interface. I get your point that cmd cannot be upgraded because of legacy issues and that is understandable and unfortunate, but windows needs a proper shell. This is obviously a great start for one side of the equation. But until there is a decent terminal app, windows will continue to be a nonstarter.

[zadjii]

It sounds like you're asking for two different things here:

cmd.exe is a shell, and that's the guy that's parked.

conhost.exe is a terminal, and that's under active development, though it's slower than something like VsCode, because we can't just go adding features as we see fit, we have a LOT of back compat we still need to support.

Fortunately, conpty will allow for the creation of new terminal applications on Windows. If you're looking for a better shell experience on windows, I can point you to powershell or even [yori](http://www.malsmith.net/yori/), which looks pretty cool

[cryptonector]

I think u/paulie_a is just asking for a better shell. If cmd can't be made better, then make a new one.

[cwyers]

That's Powershell.

[paulie_a]

Exactly, I understand there are different underlying concepts and systems to the front end and what it interacts with. It just seem incredible that windows is basically stuck with a windows 95 interface for a shell.

[nailer]

Powershell is open source, the 6.1 preview 4 is nice and fast, and you get real objects with keys rather than scraping for regexs all the time like bash.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Windows has a proper shell, it's called PowerShell and it is by far the most discoverable and consistent shell that exists.

[wtallis]

It's also the most absurdly verbose shell that exists, which means it sucks as a shell even if it's a half-decent scripting language.

[paulie_a]

I've attempted to use powershell numerous times, it's a piece of shit compared to zsh.