Xiki: An amazing shell

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/07/programmer-craig-muth-kickstarts-a-new-version-of-his-arguably-amazing-shell-xiki/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb

by jestinjoy1 • 12 years ago

311 123 12 years ago

techcrunch.com

azinman2• 12 years ago

Holy freaking crap that's amazing. I love how the video all of the sudden starts to show 9000 features/ways it can be used. Looks like the paradigm adapts well to many different common workflows.

It's really great to see someone really thinking from scratch about the shell -- something that very rarely goes through any meaningful changes like this. I hope this project goes far and becomes the new default.

shurcooL• 12 years ago

Yeah, reminds me of https://twitter.com/korkyplunger/status/485729264432472065.

noinsight• 12 years ago

It's really great to see someone really thinking from scratch about the shell

Arguably, PowerShell is shell reinvented too. But IMO someone definitely should revamp the Unix shell. If we're not talking about the actual functionality (commands etc.) but the "building blocks", I actually like PowerShell more than traditional Unix shells at this point.

This shell however fails to impress me, I don't see the point.

DanBC• 12 years ago

What features would you like to see in a Unix-like shell that are not available?

anko• 12 years ago

This reminds me of ACME http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor). To me it doesn't look like something new at all.

The cool thing about this project is it doesn't interrupt how you use your mouse. Using acme makes you learn how to use a mouse again like going from vim to emacs makes all your keybindings screw up.

Not that i'm saying copying acme is a bad thing, that editor is really underated.

biftek• 12 years ago

I played with Acme the other day and was blown away. The everything as a command idea is really powerful. Definitely underrated, would be great if it got a modern reboot.

For the unfamiliar this video by Russ Cox covers it pretty well. http://research.swtch.com/acme

claar• 12 years ago

Actually, that's exactly where the video lost me. A few additional shell capabilities? I'm interested -- cool!

But throw in a database editor and a million other unrelated-to-the-shell features? I've been down that road before, and it's a maintenance nightmare. Unless this project has huge community backing, it seems inevitable that the development resources will be stretched too thin. Then it won't work on my next computer and the bug report will sit in the queue for months while I return to bash. I don't think I want to play this game.

chx• 12 years ago

IMO this should link to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/xiki/xiki-the-command-r... and not one of the most awful, bottom feeder sites out there. I challenge you to find a single bit of information on the TC page that is not on the Kickstarter page.

leorocky2• 12 years ago

Eh, I don't think Techcrunch is so bad. They don't usually have link baity titles like wired, they genuinely try to do a good job reporting on new startups and many yc companies get an initial post on TC which gives them that first boost of users. A Techcrunch article and Techcrunch coverage is like one of the biggest boosts from getting into YC.

mastazi• 12 years ago

Techcrunch has its gems too: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/04/silicon-valley-lost-and-fou... http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/06/how-i-started-zerocater/

exadeci• 12 years ago

Well Xiki has been posted several times here and it's the first time it reaches 1st link just St because of TC....

trollol• 12 years ago

Great.. Wake me up when it hits 1.0.

sschueller• 12 years ago

It is already at v1.0 (https://github.com/trogdoro/xiki/tree/master). It has been under development for over 10 years.

lucb1e2• 12 years ago

This comment makes me wonder why he suddenly needs money for it now. Many huge projects started without kickstarter, even if they receive lots of contributions and donations nowadays, they never used to need it.

Hmm, and I remember some post on HN a few months ago about why open source projects should not ask for money/donations in the first place. The crux of it was that they basically become a company then: they work for money. People will expect something for that money, and A) features might be made simply because the developer feels he needs to do something in return for they money he's getting and B) people who donate a lot (i.e. have a lot of money) get a huge say in the project even if their ideas turn out to be horrible in practice.

SimonDawlat• 12 years ago

The video is amazing.

jestinjoy1• 12 years ago

The most revolutionist change to a shell. The feature i found very much interesting is "in xiki commands can be run from the notes"

lucb1e2• 12 years ago

We used to call them shell scripts... I mean, it's not particularly new, only now you have to ctrl+enter each individual command.

pbhjpbhj• 12 years ago

I think the OP video's demonstrated use-case makes xiki preferable to creating a shell script.

With a shell script if I want to run some copy-pasta from a blog post or somesuch then I need to edit to remove non-script parts, then I'm flitting between shells to make edits that will work. Then I use the script, and remove it. All just to run a few commands; copy paste, edit in place and ctrl+enter to execute seems far slicker to me (but haven't used it yet).

Xiki looks great for navigation too.

Currently I use bash/dash (Kubuntu) and the greatest change to me has been discovering ctrl+R (surprisingly recently!) and a couple of scripts that I made/modified following a post on HN that make an archive of input commands and enable me to grep it easily.

leorocky2• 12 years ago

I quite like fish and have been using it painlessly for nearly 6 months now. I wish fish included an actual programming language that could replace bash scripts, but the sane advice from fish devs is to use a real programming language instead of bash or another shell script. Other than that I've become quite dependent on the nice autocomplete and suggestions from fish. It just works and I never have to deal with any problems once you get over the initial learning curve bump which isn't that big.

estebanrules• 12 years ago

I've been thinking about trying out Fish shell for awhile, though I have zsh setup to my liking.

Concerning Xiki, it definitely remind me of Emacs org mode / shell.

lloeki2• 12 years ago

Fish is interesting and grows on you but suffers from a number of showstopper bugs (e.g [0]) that prevent me from using it.

[0] https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1374

omaranto2• 12 years ago

I used fish for several years and fortunately never came across that one. It's pretty awful.

barrkel2• 12 years ago

You can go a long way with bash; it's worth learning because it lets you glue tools written in different "real" languages together very easily, as long as they all talk text. There aren't many other languages specifically designed for process control, orchestration and piping.

I don't like fish because it has almost no features, compared with bash.

simias• 12 years ago

I've never understood why anyone would inflict oneself with bash scripting. If you really need something portable you should use standard /bin/sh anyway since bash is not installed by default everywhere (I believe many linux distros don't even ship with bash anymore, but a lightweight clone called "dash"?).

And if you don't care about portability out of the box, why not use... Well basically anything else? Perl, python, ruby, lua, scheme, whatever.

The only shell scripts I ever write are basically a list of command to execute sequentially. If I need something more complex (control flow, user input, proper error handling, nontrivial string manipulation) I switch to some other programming language, it's just not worth the pain.

59nadir• 12 years ago

I don't like fish because it has almost no features, compared with bash.

Which features would that be?

kevcampb• 12 years ago

This feels very like what iPython notebooks provides, but applied to shell commands rather than code.

It's a cute video, but I can't quite help feeling this is going to be far less useful in practice than it's made out to be.

nodesocket• 12 years ago

I tend to agree. The biggest leap for me was switching to oh-my-zsh (near life changing). :-)

orkoden• 12 years ago

Autocomplete all the things

meowface2• 12 years ago

I love oh-my-zsh as well, but I ended up switching to prezto (https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto), which is extremely similar but has less code and is considerably faster. Shell sessions were taking more than a few seconds to start up, and I'm using the latest MacBook Air.

signa11• 12 years ago

umm, lot of these can (which is the operative word here) be made to work together with plan9's acme...

vidarh• 12 years ago

A lot of these also works quite similar to Emacs (M-x shell).

jsmthrowaway• 12 years ago

The fact that this shell has Twitter functionality is a signal, and I can't decide if it's a negative signal or not. I've worked very hard to avoid a Twitter capable refrigerator.

anon42• 12 years ago

I think the means you can use it to script twitter functionality via twitter's REST API.

dimillian• 12 years ago

I need it. Anything similar already available?

andyhmltn• 12 years ago

I believe this is it isn't it? https://github.com/trogdoro/xiki

1ris• 12 years ago

Acme,or Plan9 terminal, EMACS Org Mode

anon42• 12 years ago

From the brief time I spent with Emacs, I think its shell integration can work like that, but you'll need to write some elisp code to get all the features he shows for xiki.

vertex-four• 12 years ago

Native Oberon.

No, I'm kidding, but Native Oberon is pretty much this as a (research) operating system; the interface is a bunch of text editor panes, you type out commands and run them by middle-clicking on them, commands tend to produce output in the form of further commands you can run, and you can save these panes as files at any time.

It's almost like a generalised version of the core operating system shown in The Mother Of All Demos.

edlerd• 12 years ago

looks like the vim browser with a bash file that can be commented (and run and given to friends).

pmontra3• 12 years ago

Installed, started. xiki status says it's running but I'm back in my usual shell and nothing works any different. No mouse interaction like in the video. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, maybe the tutorial (Where is it?) or is it an OSX only thing? I'm on Linux.

I started the web interface, used it to hook xiki to emacs, restarted emacs and run into the unfixed "error: el4r-instance is dead" bug.

I stopped using xiki. Maybe I'll give it a try when I'll have time to investigate but it's 2014. There are too many tools battling for mindshare and if something doesn't have a good tutorial and doesn't work out of the box isn't giving a good signal.

lpsz• 12 years ago

With all due respect, this looks like an early-stage project. If everyone adopts such a dismissive attitude, Show HN might as well not exist.

pmontra3• 12 years ago

The first commit in git is from 2008. https://github.com/trogdoro/xiki/commits/master?page=17 From http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/778419-meet-xiki-the-re... it turns out than "Craig Muth, has been working on Xiki for ten years". Maybe not a mature project but not an early stage one.

jonahx• 12 years ago

I think the opposite is true: If the cultural norm here was to insist on good, simple installation and basic usage tutorials, then we'd see more of them and everyone would benefit.

This doesn't imply that you can't share rough, buggy prototypes. It just means that before you do, it would be expected that you spend more time guiding people to get up and running and pointing out possible pitfalls.

I'd argue that in many cases this doesn't even take that much time and yet is the single most important thing you can do when sharing.

Note: I'm just addressing your general point and not making a comment on xiki's install process in particular.

zorbo2• 12 years ago

These alternative shells always get me really excited, until I try them out. Then the drawbacks become immediately and very painfully obvious:

- Some are extremely slow, especially those that rely on complete webservers / node.js / whatever as a backend

- Memory-hungry. I've got an average of about 30 terminals open at all times. 50 Mb per terminal really is a bit too much. 10 Mb is the upper limit on what a single terminal should ever use.

- Don't work remote. If it doesn't work remotely without installation (and none do), it's pointless to me.

- Don't integrate properly. For instance, copy-pasting is suddenly painfully impossible or unicode fails or it doesn't handle ncurses or escape sequences properly.

- Doesn't add anything that the history and copy-pasting don't already do nearly perfectly.

- Doesn't follow the "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible" philosophy. For example, catting large (10mb) log files or a binary file completely barfs it.

I wonder if Xiki is any different, as I haven't tried it yet. It seems unwieldy to use. Why would I want to physically move the cursor to a previous command 50 lines up when I can just do Ctrl-R <part of the command> and be done with it?

This all sounds a bit negative, which isn't my intention. It's just that I've become quite a skeptic when it comes to "(email|shell|editor|etc) reinvented" claims.

KhalPanda• 12 years ago

Wow, an average of 30 terminals at all times? Just out of curiosity... what for exactly? Real-time monitoring?

mkl• 12 years ago

I always have at least that many too. Not for real-time monitoring, just a large number of projects and threads of thought, many of which last for weeks or months. I do this for everything: I just totalled up all my currently open terminals, browser tabs, documents, etc., and got to over 700, and it's only that low because I've restarted a couple of times recently....

nkozyra• 12 years ago

Yeah I start to have a panic attack when I see 5 or more shells open.

alekratz3• 12 years ago

I mean, why do you have 30 tabs open at all times? You move on to something else, forget your tab was open, and go through at the end of the week and clean them all out.

gitaarik• 12 years ago

When you're using tmux or screen this isn't uncommon. I have a screen for each project, in a project I usually have around 5 to 10 tabs, and I have about 5 projects I'm currently working on.

zorbo2• 12 years ago

I use a lot of terminal applications for mail, irc, music player, chat. Then there are always about 9 permanent terminals for generic local stuff such as setting up tunnels, man pages, socks proxy, a calculator, etc. Then I've got 9 terminals per remote location / project I'm working on. These are shells for file system navigation, grepping, reference, editor, a few database sessions, log file tailing. Then there are the random terminals opened for who knows what. I generally keep the terminals for projects I work on the most open all the time.

30 sounds like a lot, but really it's a very easy workflow process to follow if you've got virtual desktops. For instance, all persistent stuff (irc, music player, chat) lives on desktop 1. Mail, password manager, todo list on desktop 2. Browser on 3. Local terminals on 4. Remote terminals in tabs on 5, etc. I've been using the same workflow for years (going on decades). I can switch to nearly every window in two keystrokes, which never change.

tizzdogg• 12 years ago

I also usually have dozens of terminals open, though my workflow is probably different than most people on HN. I do 3d graphics on linux, so I have a separate desktop for each session of Nuke, Maya, houdini etc that I'm working on, each with a few associated terminals.

I very much dislike using things like tmux or even tabs in terminals, since I find it much easier for processes to get buried and to forget where everything is. It's much easier for me to have separate windows open so I can see everything that's going on at once.

yawaramin• 12 years ago

You have some good points. Please try Xiki and let us know what you think. -The Internet.

throwawayaway• 12 years ago

without having tried it myself, the guy started work on it 13 years ago. that would give enough time to polish off rough edges like you mention, even redesign out some design errors.

ape42• 12 years ago

Right way I wondering about working remotely since its the shell in your editor (which I don't have).

alekratz3• 12 years ago

I agree with this. I'm concerned with having to move my mouse cursor a lot. When it comes to doing terminal stuff, mouse cursors slow me down.

baweaver2• 12 years ago

TMUX is a thing. People should really be using it for this type of workflow considering you can set up environments that don't necessarily have to be running all the time for other projects. This seems far more like a self-inflicted problem than anything.

scott_s2• 12 years ago

It is a thing, but I find that having separate desktops ("spaces" in OSX terminology) for different tasks helps me context switch back to the task quicker. I keep different desktops for different tasks, each with their own terminal running. Each terminal may have several tabs opens. When it's time to switch to that task, I switch to that desktop. When that task is completely done, I just close everything and remove the desktop.

Keeping this all in my head - even remembering how many shells I had open to do what - takes more thinking and effort than I want it to. It is far easier for me to just say, "This is where all the stuff for X goes" and physically isolate it from everything for Y and Z. And when I go back to it, it's all where I left it. I find this a much easier workflow.

thinkpad20• 12 years ago

You have a lot of good points, but this one jumped out at me:

- Don't work remote. If it doesn't work remotely without installation (and none do), it's pointless to me.

That just sounds like a by-definition dismissal of all shells outside of the few provided by an OS. Having it work remotely is of course essential. But the most talented programmer alive is not going to write a shell that you can use without installing it. :/

btbuildem• 12 years ago

as I haven't tried it yet

Maybe it would be prudent to try it first, before commenting..

stedaniels• 12 years ago

"When I was supposed to be doing my boring job as a software dev at banks and insurance companies in Ohio 13 years ago, I started making this thing that let me run commands and navigate files directly from my notes."

With all the stories of disgruntled developers complaining that their employer took ownership of something they'd worked on in their spare time, I wouldn't be surprised if his old employers came a knocking.

If it wasn't for that, I'd likely already be backing the new version, it feels very good to use. The video is very slick, there are some companies out there making good money producing these things!

bencollier49• 12 years ago

He would have to be very unlucky for that to happen, but admitting it online was perhaps not the best move.

jdong• 12 years ago

To be honest, a lot of these functionalities really don't seem to fit into a shell but into some sort of a GUI file manager.

msie2• 12 years ago

It's cool, but I can't imagine it making my life any better over a Unix prompt. What I really want is a Windows shell that acts exactly like my OSX Unix shell. I did a little look but didn't see anything satisfactory.

msie2• 12 years ago

For some reason I think I saw some of this in Smalltalk and Oberon.

michaelmcmillan• 12 years ago

It looks like a good solution to a lot of tedious problems, especially considering navigation.

On the other hand, it seems like there's no boundaries for what problems Xiki should solve.

Where do you draw the line? I would for instance never expect my shell to be able to manage my database. It just doesn't make sense to delegate that job to the shell.

spain• 12 years ago

Seems like a lot of ideas from GNU Emacs and Plan 9 (such as interactive text and evaluating within text buffers) rolled into one, so in that sense it isn't anything revolutionary. Of course it could end up being something nice, but the way the Kickstarter video rubs off on me makes me doubt it.

TeeWEE• 12 years ago

The whole bash shell is built around input/output. A command generates output. Which might be input for another program. This forces commands to be non-interactive, and just plaint text. But it comes with the immense power of building great programs using functional composition. It looks like Xiki breaks that in its core, and provides "UIX" ouputs to programs. I'm not sure i like that complexity. I'd prefer the simplicity that bash provides.

5partan• 12 years ago

Supporting 2 new text editors or IDEs: 4 months (likely Vim and Sublime, but it depends on what everyone votes for - also which one is implemented first depends on the votes)

--> Please all vote for Vim :)

notduncansmith• 12 years ago

The visual file navigation looks like it would be a real step down. If I already know the directory I'm navigating to, it would almost certainly be less keystrokes to cd [first letter of first directory]<tab>/[first letter of second]<tab>, etc. If I wanted to visually navigate files, I'd use Finder.

m_mueller• 12 years ago

There's at least one use case I want this for: Interactive documentation of shell based programs. As a start, imagine a git tutorial with this thing - beautiful.

BPm2• 12 years ago

I actually like my shell as it is. I like the old fashion with no mouse interaction except for scrolling. Is it just me? But I have to say the interactive search is appealing.

thathonkey• 12 years ago

My approach to CLI is basically: if I wanted to use the mouse, I wouldn't be in the terminal. Having to reach for the mouse is a huge waste of time and I only do it if I need to scroll (rare) or copy+paste (relatively common).

Although since I use OS X (Darwin) I don't always need the mouse to copy+paste (ie. pbcopy -> cmd+V).

BPm2• 12 years ago

Yes! I agree completely.

There's also one more situation where we need the mouse: selecting a specific text on the console to copy & paste.

Cacti• 12 years ago

The first part (filtering/searching/expansion) is pretty similar to emacs's helm/anything.

robinho364• 12 years ago

Really cool!

A few months ago, I started to use vim mode in shell, for the raw way is not convenient. Furthermore, I have formed an similar idea of "interactive shell", whereas I have to finish my GRE firstly...

yepguy• 12 years ago

I'm personally keeping my eye on the oh shell [0]. It adds some scheme goodness to the shell without throwing familiarity to the wind.

[0] https://github.com/michaelmacinnis/oh

xatax• 12 years ago

“Originally I created Xiki for my own use,” said Muth. “When I was supposed to be doing my boring job as a software dev at banks and insurance companies in Ohio 13 years ago, I started making this thing that let me run commands and navigate files directly from my notes. Ever since then I’ve found myself unable to resist working on it. I use it for everything.”

Isn't this a bit concerning? It sounds like this was created on employer time with employer resources, yet there is nothing about this in the Kickstarter page itself. It seems like there could be a potential legal issue because of this, but there is no reassurance that either it's already been cleared, or that it's a potential risk.

Seems like a big oversight that might prevent some people who read this from contributing.

jgmmo2• 12 years ago

Maybe he does own the IP outright. He negotiated for the right to create side projects and has paperwork to prove it?

Or maybe he figures it's his because it's not within the scope of his employment. i.e. -- has nothing to do with banks in and of itself.

jdc0589• 12 years ago

when I was supposed to be doing my job

No negotiating your way out of that. I know lots of people have done this type of thing at work, but I guarantee you he didn't have anything in his employment agreement that said "If I dick around instead of working and get paid for it like I was working, everything is fine, don't even worry about it."

That's a fire-able offense for any sane employer that doesn't have a 20% time deal or something similar. Hell, most employers specifically address this in the employment agreement.

I've got 15% time at my job, and I still wouldn't do this unless it was going to directly benefit my company, including other people that work here.

jcfrei• 12 years ago

I don't like to sound derogatory, but xiki would have to turn into a multi million dollar business before insurance or bank companies would consider any legal action.

zo1• 12 years ago

"but xiki would have to turn into a multi million dollar business before insurance or bank companies would consider any legal action." Or until they step on the wrong foot, or rub some executive the wrong way.

It's murky water and just because in most situations it'll be "okay", doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about it from the start.

dheera• 12 years ago

Speaking of shells, I wish there were a shell inspired by python, able to conveniently use python libraries (perhaps even auto-import them), but with the convenience features of common shells. I can never remember the ghastly syntax of bash.

omaranto2• 12 years ago

Maybe the now defunct pysh profile of ipython [1] is close to what you want. (It's defunct because it is mostly unneccesary in recent versions of ipython, that page shows how to get most (all?) of the functionality it used to provide.)

For Perl instead of Python there are psh [2] and zoidberg [3].

[1] http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/interactive/shell.html

[2] http://gnp.github.io/psh/

[3] https://github.com/jberger/Zoidberg

alekratz3• 12 years ago

This reminds me of the TempleOS HolyC shell.

ape42• 12 years ago

I like that it can "run" things beside programs. eg URLs, phone numbers. That seems like a good idea other shells could do.

fit2rule• 12 years ago

Sorry but the cognitive load for this shell is just too darn high. I understand the power, I even get close to grok'ing the 'why', but I just don't see how I can intuit all the various features from the app. Do I need to spend a few hours doing a tutorial first? If so: forget it. I don't have time to do that, not for a shell, no matter how fancy it is .. however, if there is a neat and easy and fast way to learn these powerful features built-in, I'll give it a chance. As it stands though, the video just makes me glaze over about 1/5th of the way into it .. I'm impressed by the awesome power, but the load is just too high.

the_eradicator• 12 years ago

Most recent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7869246, and previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4512928.

Xiki: An amazing shell

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