Other compilation targets?

[kbd]

What's Amber's stance on other compilation targets, such as Zsh, Fish, or pure POSIX? Maybe post 1.0? Today, could I safely use compiled Amber functions in my Zsh shell?

[lens0021]

Though I don't know what is the goal of Amber, I am personally using amber i) To run a script for some old servers ii) To achieve the zero-dependency, because almost every machine I maintain has Bash and iii) To use where bash is basically supported (github actions, user-data in cloud-init, Packer shell provisioner etc). So other shells then sh itself are not in the scope I am interested.

What is your use case?

[kbd]

What is your use case?

There's a difference between using bash as a target runtime (eg. I have only bash on a server) and wanting to integrate with your existing shell usage (eg. interactive). I spend a lot of time in my shell but posix scripting is doodoo.

For example, I would like nice function syntax and argument parsing in my shell scripting. It would be nice if I could write a shell function or script in a presumably good/modern/correct language (Amber) vs writing posix/bash/zsh code anymore at all. If you have TypeScript, why go back to vanilla JavaScript?

If Amber is a good replacement for bash at work, it'd be nice if I could also count on it to be a replacement for zsh at home. So, is that the intent, or should I look at Amber as just something to "target bash on a server" instead of something I can use more often? It would be nice if Amber let me extend the range at which I can "keep using my shell" instead of having to switch code over to Python when I want nice argument parsing or something. Maybe Amber could generate shell completions for its compiled functions. That would improve day-to-day.

[Mte90]

We have a ticket to track bash support, right now we are working to be most compliant with Posix and Bash latest version.

We have a PR from @lens0021 that will help us checking for the various Bash versions.
I never used Zsh but if bash script works with that shell there are no issues.

[lens0021]

zsh has slight differences from bash, but I think bash is available in the almost case when zsh is the default shell. Anyway, I use fish shell as a default shell.

[lens0021]

It would be good if there is the section "Why Amber?" at https://amber-lang.com/ or https://docs.amber-lang.com/getting_started/getting_started.
I don't know why and how Amber started. Could you give us some explanation? @Ph0enixKM