I currently maintain a package manager that is a 600 line shell script. What I
have learned is that while you can do anything in Shell, you probably should
not.
If your shell script gets large enough you can start writing chunks or maybe the
whole script in Awk, as you at least get rational math. However then you realize
that Awk standard library is non existant and you have to write functions for
almost everything: array operations, string operations, etc.
This is the point of languages like Perl or Python. They have solved the
shortfalls of Bash and Awk. In my opinion Shell scripts should only be used for
the most trivial of tasks. Otherwise you could end up like the biggest crime in
the history of shell scripting: Autotools.
curl piped to bash really hurts :( As are all the other potential pitfalls of implementing (yet another) package manager. ie. security tracking/updates, resource integrity.
I think this is a bad idea.
I currently maintain a package manager that is a 600 line shell script. What I have learned is that while you can do anything in Shell, you probably should not.
If your shell script gets large enough you can start writing chunks or maybe the whole script in Awk, as you at least get rational math. However then you realize that Awk standard library is non existant and you have to write functions for almost everything: array operations, string operations, etc.
This is the point of languages like Perl or Python. They have solved the shortfalls of Bash and Awk. In my opinion Shell scripts should only be used for the most trivial of tasks. Otherwise you could end up like the biggest crime in the history of shell scripting: Autotools.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Build_System#Criticism
curl piped to bash really hurts :( As are all the other potential pitfalls of implementing (yet another) package manager. ie. security tracking/updates, resource integrity.
curl pipe bash over insecure HTTP is even worse