[ModernMech]

Why doesn’t Amber have equivalent issues? Such as depending on a specific version of bash, or specific executables to be installed.

Also does bash run on windows outside of WSL? Amber seems to argue that it doesn’t support Windows because Windows doesn’t support bash.

That would cut against the idea that bash can target more devices than Python, which runs natively on all platforms.

[Sebb767]

> Why doesn’t Amber have equivalent issues? Such as depending on a specific version of bash, or specific executables to be installed.

Because it's easy (for most cases) to write backwards-compatible or portable shell scripts and, since Amber is compiled, it can simply generate backwards-compatible code.

> That would cut against the idea that bash can target more devices than Python, which runs natively on all platforms.

The point is that Bash is more ubiquitously available, which is important if you write something like an install script.

[fluidcruft]

Only the ancient GPLv2 bash is actually ubiquitous and you might as well just target POSIX's sh if that's the argument.

[sundarurfriend]

> Also does bash run on windows outside of WSL?

Git Bash is pretty ubiquitous on developer machines in my experience.

[ModernMech]

"pretty ubiquitous" is what I'm referring to here. OP seemed to imply that because the other options have "non-zero friction" that targeting bash has zero friction. But you have to make sure bash is there, and if it's not, you have to install a toolchain that may include an entire operating system.

I guess I just don't understand how having the user install git bash or WSL any different from having them install Python or JVM?

[freedomben]

Amber doesn't have equivalent issues because bash and the utilities it uses like bc and sed are incredibly stable. I've found nontrivial shell scripts I wrote decades ago that still run entirely unchanged.

[ModernMech]

That only applies to platforms on which those utilities already run. We are talking about portability here, so that means Windows, and those utils don't run on Windows. So you're left with git bash, which isn't bash and isn't running the same utilities; and WSL, which requires installing an entire operating system.

So I ask again, why does targeting bash offer a better portability story than say the JVM?

[freedomben]

I suspect we may have different ideas of the use case here. To me Amber is not a language I would develop an application in. I would use it in the same places I currently write bash.

Given that, my production systems are likely a big target. None of my production systems have a JVM/JRE installed, and installing one just to run shell scripts would be (IMHO) a huge increase in attack surface for little to no gain. It would also bloat the hell out of my container images.

If I'm writing a GUI application or a web server or something, then I would agree JVM is more "portable." But if I just want a script that will run equally well on Ubuntu 18.04 and Fedora 40, and across all production machines regardless of what application stack is there (node.js, ruby, python, etc), and regardless of what version of node or python or ruby is installed, Amber feels highly portable to me.

[sgarland]

GNU and BSD tooling differs in small, but sometimes breaking ways. One example off the top of my head is that GNU sed accepts `sed -i`, but BSD requires `sed -i ''`, i.e. an empty string to tell it not to back up the existing file. Or GNU awk having sorting capabilities. Etc.

[joveian]

Or the lack of a portable stat :(.