murex VS bash-timestamping-sqlite

This is how murex works too https://github.com/lmorg/murex/blob/master/config/defaults/p...

I agree. I’ve written about this before but this is what murex (1) does. It reimplements some of coreutils where there are benefits in doing so (eg sed, grep etc -like parsing of lists that are in formats other than flat lines of text. Such as JSON arrays)

Mutex does this by having these utilities named slightly different to their POSIX counterparts. So you can use all of the existing CLI tools completely but additionally have a bunch of new stuff too.

Far too many alt shells these days try to replace coreutils and that just creates friction in my opinion.

1. https://murex.rocks

This is exactly what Murex shell does. It has lots of builtin tools for querying structured data (of varying formats) but also supports POSIX pipes for using existing tools like `jq` et al seamlessly too.

https://murex.rocks

Stable is a problem because a lot of these shells don’t offer any guarantees for breaking changes.

My own shell, https://github.com/lmorg/murex is committed to backwards compatibility but even here, there are occasional changes made that might break backwards compatibility. Though I do push back on such changes as much as possible, to the extent that most of my scripts from 5 years ago still run unmodified.

This is similar to how my shell works. It still just passes bytes around but additionally passes information about how those bytes could be interpreted. A schema if you will. So it works as cleanly with POSIX / GNU / et al tools as it does with fancy JSON, YAML, CSV and other document formats.

It basically sits somewhere between Powershell and Bash: typed pipelines like Powershell but without sacrificing familiarity with all the CLI commands you already use day in and day out.

https://github.com/lmorg/murex

As an aside, I’m about to drop a massive update in the next few days that will make the shell even more intuitive to use.

> It’s just collecting data for the sake of collecting data.

No, sleep is one of the most important parameters for health!

If in 2024 you are not collecting data on your sleep to take action (and for ex, stop overtraining, reduce drinking etc) to reduce the risks of future brain problems, you are doing it wrong.

> Even if it was accurate, I can just tell by feel

I can't, and I fear it may be the same "overconfidence" issue that cause car accidents when drunk.

I collect logs with my sqlite based bash history collection that I've been running for 5 years: https://github.com/csdvrx/bash-timestamping-sqlite

Thanks to my garmin, I have identified a pattern where I feel ok, but my garmin reported less REM sleep than usual: in the day, I run a few more commands than usual and I have more mistakes (as can be seen by the non-zero return values)

> Should be doable with bash's PROMPT_COMMAND if you are still on bash

Already done, with a sqlite backend: https://github.com/csdvrx/bash-timestamping-sqlite

It will be inspired by https://github.com/csdvrx/bash-timestamping-sqlite but it will add a theme suited for eink and a proper support for shortcuts or keys like delete/backspace/control delete/control backspace etc. as I'm used to Windows shortcuts and can't do with vim if control-left doesn't jump to the left word but I have to do the traditional esc b that I don't like much :)

For bash users who are tempted by zsh interactive "fuzzy" completion, here's my take on it: it's directory-aware (offering different suggestions based on your history of commands in that given directory), pure bash code using sqlite to store data: https://github.com/csdvrx/bash-timestamping-sqlite

The only other dependency is fzy for fuzzy matching.

It should be a super simple feature to add to your terminal emulator: SCP works with a X,Y position. RCP just "jumps" there.

If you keep an accounting of how many lines you have displayed since then, you could alter the response to RCP by also doing the appropriate amount of scrolling: it should only take one variable, the deltaY to scroll.

If you want to test the idea, I think you could even use tmux and send commands to control the scrollback cf ahttps://superuser.com/questions/209437/how-do-i-scroll-in-tm...

I've used similar tricks with RCP/SCP but for simpler things: the only slight difficulty is the deltaY accounting, like when you are executing commands near the bottom of the screen because you must take into account that scolling will happen - but it's essentially similar to your idea.

So check https://github.com/csdvrx/bash-timestamping-sqlite/blob/main... and make sure you understand both how the __notbottom function works, and why PS0 needs an extra Esc[2a

Actually, now that I think more about your idea, it would be sweet to keep a SCP/RCP stack with multiple values, where you can push values with each SCP then pop them with RCP, say in sequence, or maybe just access the nth value with a different command that wouldn't pop them? That could be done nicely by augmenting RCP.

Also you could augment SCP with an optional flag to specify whether the terminal should scroll back upon RCP of this nth entry, and you'd have a great function that would be quite useful (ex: SCP with a jump bool when the return is non 0: you could make a shortcut to jump to the commands that have returned errors)

There's no reason to stop adding cool features to terminals: we're in a terminal renaissance!

Or if you use bash, try my own bash solution: https://github.com/csdvrx/bash-timestamping-sqlite

> The problem happens when somebody "updates" that web server in-place.

Imagine this is 28-nginx : I would jist create another script 29-nginx-update recording the update, even if it: "echo apt-get update; apt-get upgrade nginx ; echo "make sure to fix variable $foo"

Next time I have to do that, I will integrate that into 28-nginx and remove 29-nginx-update

> eventually when someone tries the whole checklist from the beginning, they'll find it's now broken; the steps aren't working as expected.

Maybe I don't understand the issue, but my scripts or text files are simple and meant to be used in sequence. If I hack the scripts, I make sure it still works as expected - and given my natural laziness, I only ever update scripts when deploying to a new server or VM, so I get an immediate feedback if they stop working

Still, sometimes something may work as expected (ex: above, maybe $foo depends on a context?), but it only means I need to generalize the previous solution - and since the script update only happen in the context of a new deployment, everything is still fresh in my head.

To help me with that, I also use zfs snapshots at important steps, to be able to "observe" what the files looked like on the other server at a specific time. The snapshots conveniently share the same name (ex etc@28-nginx) so comparing the files to create a scripts can be easily done with diff -Nur using .zfs/snapshot/ cf https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/gbiqe/index.ht...

Between that + a sqlite database containing the full history of commands types (including in which directory, and their return code), I rarely have such issues

Shameless plug for that bash history in sqlite: https://github.com/csdvrx/bash-timestamping-sqlite

> I believe that using zsh means, for the vast majority of users, using just a small subset of functionality that gives a better UX when compared to Bash.

What about adding only these functionalities you may care about?

When I tried zsh, what I liked was the history search. Like youm Everything else "wasn't as simple as I expected".

So I fixed my bash. Check https://github.com/csdvrx/bash-timestamping-sqlite :

- stores everything into a sqlite database so 2 separate terminals can access each other history on the go

- add extras details to the history like when the command started, stopped, which with return code, in which directory,

- for accessing the history, uses fzy for fuzzy finding,

- provides 2 separate history search context: either global (ctrl-t) or "this directory only" (ctrl-r), with extra goodies like excluding commands with a non-zero return error code thanks to the extra things saved

I included a few examples of the SQL queries you can run.