websocketd VS oil

Somewhat related: https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd

> websocketd is a small command-line tool that will wrap an existing command-line interface program, and allow it to be accessed via a WebSocket.

I hadn't even considered collecting traces/spans in this way yet, and have taken the approach of "stuff outputting logs in JSON format to stderr/local file". I usually end up writing a (temporary, structured) log message with the relevant span tags, but wouldn't it would be much better to run the actual trace/span code and be able to verify it locally without the ad-hoc log message?

The prototype I built is a web application that creates websocket connections, and if those connections receive messages that are JSON, log lines are added. Columns are built dynamically as log messages arrive, and then you can pick which columns to render in the table. If you're curious here's the code, including a screenshot: https://github.com/corytheboyd-smartsheet/json-log-explorer

With websockets, it's very easy to use websocketd (http://websocketd.com), which will watch input files for new lines, and write them verbatim as websocket messages to listeners (the web app).

To make the idea real, would want to figure out how to not require the user to run websocketd out of band, but watching good ol' files is dead simple, and very easy to add to most code (add a new log sink, use existing log file, etc.)

* Additionally, client can stream data to the backend server (if bidirectional GRPC streams are used). I.e. client sends WebSocket messages, those will be transformed to GRPC messages by WebSocket server and delivered to the application backend.

As a result we have a system which allows to quickly create individual streams by using strict GRPC contract but terminating connections over WebSocket transport. So it works well in web browsers. After that no need to write WebSocket protocol, client implementation, handle WebSocket connection. This all will be solved by a suggested WebSocket server and its client SDKs.

The mechanics is similar to Websocketd (https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd), but instead of creating OS processes we create GRPC streams. The difference from grpc-web (https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web) is that we provide streaming capabilities but not exposing GRPC contract to the client - just allowing to stream any data as payload (both binary and text) with some wrappers from our client SDKs side for managing subscriptions. I.e. it's not native GRPC streams on the client side - we expose just Connection/Subscription object to stream in both directions. GRPC streams used only for communication between WebSocket server and backend. To mention - grpc-web does not support all kinds of streaming now (https://github.com/grpc/grpc-web#streaming-support) while proposed solution can. This all should provide a cross-platform way to quickly write streaming apps due to client SDKs and language-agnostic nature of GRPC.

I personally see both pros and cons in this scheme (without concentrating on both too much here to keep the question short). I spent some time thinking about this myself, already have some working prototypes – but turned out need more opinions before moving forward with the idea and releasing this, kinda lost in doubts.

My main question - whether this seems interesting for someone here? Do you find this useful and see practical value?

I also used to use this (http://websocketd.com/) along with netcat(1) before just biting the bullet and writing my own websocket library for our server as we needed to scale up slightly.

Another option if you’re ready to implement the frontend part is https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd which has the advantage of streaming the output of your script

Wanted to add websocketd [1]. It's an amazing tool to stream debugging logs to another system where you can build your webapps that accumulate alerts.

Use it only for debugging builds and not for production (obviously).

[1] https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd

will prevent almost all of the "silent footguns".

YSH has strict:all and then a bunch of NEW features.

There's been good feedback recently, which has led to many concrete changes. So your experience can definitely influence the language! https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Where-To-Send-Feedback

Regarding writing tools/tests/benchmarks in bash+Python, vs. writing tools in your main language:

I think we might eventually concede that something Debian-like is the “standard development environment” (at least for server side stuff, i.e. not iOS apps)

In this case, bash+Python is a non-issue. It works extremely reliably. That’s actually why I use it! Everything else seems to break, or it’s really slow (node.js is a very common alternative).

- Microsoft conceded this back in ~2017, by building Linux into their kernel with WSL, and providing Ubuntu on top

Yes bash + Python is a disaster on Windows (I have scars from it), but Microsoft agrees that the right place to solve that is in Windows :-)

- Every CI system runs Debian/Ubuntu

- Every hosting provider runs Debian/Ubuntu

- Every online dev env like gitpod.io provides Debian/Ubuntu

This is somewhat related to remote dev envs: https://lobste.rs/s/ucirlx/lapdev_self_hosted_remote_dev

One vision for https://www.oilshell.org/ is that the CI environment is the dev environment is the hosting environment.

Everything is just an equal node in a distributed system. BUT it’s more git like, in that you explicitly sync and work “locally”, wherever that is. You don’t have the network chatter and flakiness of “the cloud”.

Oils has a very large set of monotonically increasing properties too - https://www.oilshell.org/release/0.21.0/quality.html

All that is bash+Python that is run on every commit, and it’s extremely good at catching bugs and perf regressions.

I’m skeptical that any project has that level of quality automation written in pure Rust or Zig. More likely it’s a bunch of cloud services with YAML.

Also a bunch of “hard-coded” toolchains that you can’t script with bespoke code. Like some shell commands in your package.json, which is just a worse way of writing a shell script.

Our quality process is all self-hosted, in the repo, and runs on both Github Actions and sourcehut - https://www.oilshell.org/release/0.21.0/pub/metrics.wwz/line...

bash and Python runs perfectly on Github Actions and sourcehut, with zero change. Containers also do.

(Although we need to unify the CI and release, because the release runs on 2 different real hardware machines, while CI is cloud only.)

Also, a main point Oils is that bash now has another highly compatible, spec-driven implementation – OSH. Having 2 independent implementations is something newer languages don’t have.

(copy of lobste.rs comment)

in your bashrc to enable it. I've used it for probably ~18 years now.

It also works with https://www.oilshell.org/ since we use GNU readline. Just 'set -o vi' in ~/.config/oils/oshrc

No other shell does that.

But I didn't know it was called MULTIOS until now. (I guess that's read "mult I/O's"? I have a hard time not reading it was multi-OS :) )

It seems a bit niche to be honest, but it's possible to support in Oils.

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Oils also uses Unix domain sockets already for the headless shell protocol

https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Headless-Mode

We could do something like dgsh, but so far I haven't seen a lot of uptake / demand. Every time it's mentioned, somebody kinda wants it, and then it kinda peters out again ... still possible though.

I think flat files work fine for a lot of use cases, and once you add streaming, you also want monitoring, more control over backpressure/queue sizes, etc.

which works well. You don't have to clean when rebuilding variants. IMO this is 100% essential for writing C++ these days. You need a bunch of test binaries, and all tests should be run with ASAN and UBSAN.

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I wrote a mini-bazel on top of Ninja with these features:

https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2022/10/garbage-collector.html...

So it's ~1700 lines, but for that you get the build macros like asdl_library() generating C++ and Python (the same as proto_library(), a schema language that generates code)

And it also correctly finds dependencies of code generators. So if you change a .py file that is imported by another .py file that is used to generated a C++ header, everything will work. That was one of the trickier bits, with Ninja implicit dependencies.

I also use the Bazel-target syntax like //core/process

This build file example mixes low level Ninja n.rule() and n.build() with high level r.cc_library() and so forth. I find this layering really does make it scale better for bigger projects

https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/asdl/NINJA_subgr...

Some more description - https://lobste.rs/s/qnb7xt/ninja_is_enough_build_system#c_tu...

This is sort of a category error...

re2c is a lexer generator, and YAML and Python are recursive/nested formats.

You can definitely use re2c to lex them, but it's not the whole solution.

I use it for everything possible in https://www.oilshell.org, and it's amazing. It really reduces the amount of fiddly C code you need to parse languages, and it drops in anywhere.

SEEKING VOLUNTEERS - https://www.oilshell.org/ - https://github.com/oilshell/oil/

I'm looking for people to help fill out the "standard library" for Oils/YSH. We're implementing a shell for Python and JavaScript programmers who avoid shell!

On the surface, this is writing some very simple functions in typed Python. But I've realized that the hardest parts are specifying, TESTING, and documenting what the functions do.

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The most recent release announcement also asks for help - https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2024/01/release-0.19.0.html (long)

If you find all those details interesting (if maybe overwhelming), you might have a mind for language design, and could be a good person to help.

Surveying what Python and JavaScript do is very helpful, e.g. for the recent Str.replace() function, which is nontrivial (takes a regex or string, replacement template or string)

But there are also very simple methods to get started, like Dict.values() and List.indexOf(). Other people have already contributed code. Examples:

https://github.com/oilshell/oil/commit/58d847008427dba2e60fe...

https://github.com/oilshell/oil/commit/8f38ee36d01162593e935...

This can also be useful to tell if you'll have fun working on the project - https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Where-Contributors-Have...

More on #help-wanted on Zulip (requires login) - https://oilshell.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/417617-help-wa...

Please send a message on Github or Zulip! Or e-mail me andy at oilshell dot org.

This is true, but then the corrolary is that new PRs need to come with this higher and rigorous level of test coverage.

And then that becomes a bit of a barrier to contribution -- that's a harness

I often write entirely new test harnesses for features, e.g. for https://www.oilshell.org, many of them linked here . All of these run in the CI - https://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/quality.html

The good thing is that it definitely helps me accept PRs faster. Current contributors are good at this kind of exhaustive testing, but many PRs aren't