Microsoft Next Generation Shell

An anonymous reader writes "I found this while searching for Perl Jobs in India: "The Microsoft Next Generation Shell Team is designing and developing a new command line scripting environment from the ground up. The new shell and utilities, based on the .NET Frameworks, will provide a very rich object-based mechanism for managing system properties. To be delivered in the next release of Windows, it will include the attributes of competitors' shells (e.g. aliases, job control, command substitution, pipelines, regular expressions, transparent remote execution) plus rich features based on Windows and .NET (e.g. command discovery via .NET reflection API's, object-based properties/methods, 1:many server scripting, pervasive auto-complete)."

wonder what this means

[neildogg]

"Candidates should have Windows NT or Windows 2000 system programming experience, development experience with object-oriented languages and design methodologies as well as with scripting and shell languages like PERL, Python and Bash. Candidates should have at least 2-5 years experience (based on level interviewing for) in high technology, preferably delivering products for both Windows and non-Windows operating systems."

I guess Microsoft has viewed users of other platforms as important before (recruiting of Palm developers) but this seems like a direct call to Unix (mostly Linux) developers to make Windows shell exactly like other existing technology. Though I can't say I'm surprised, I think this is one of the first times where Microsoft seems to have stated that they are persuing similar technologies.

Wasn't the CLI have disappeared?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't the command line interface supposed to disappear since Windows 98??? That's what they claimed back then. They said they were gonna get rid of it.

They are doing this because UNIXes are becoming more and more famous again???

Development in India

[slashuzer]

It would be interesting to know just how much of Microsoft's "future devlopment" are being made in India. My guess is that the OS, Office etc continue to be further developed by the team(s) in Redmond, but most new products/services are being developed in India.

Is this news?

[nuggz]

You mean the big bad MS is developing all sorts of technology. Some of it just copying features found before in other operating systems.

Does it really surprise anyone that MS knows about other operating systems, Bash, Perl and Python.

The things they list in this post are good useful tools, it should be obvious that they would look to implement them now that clustering is becomming a larger concern. Admin by GUI works for a handful of computers, but when you start dealing with many, you need something else, and MS is going to provide that.

This just shows they are acting more serious about providing Enterprise Solutions.

additional information

[neildogg]

There are also other jobs related to the same area listed for Microsoft India Development Center here [jobsahead.com].

A good thing, really.

[bdowne01]

Actually, I'm really intrigued about the possiblity of having a "strong" shell on Windows. It's one of the main reasons I can't find myself using Windows for much.

Usually, if I had to...I just installed Cygwin and used it from there. However, the interaction between the actual Windows environment and Cygwin was a little cumbersome--but usable. I've written some crazy shell scripts using Cygwin, but trying to run a Windows command using variables from the script can be tricky, for example.

However this opens up some other nice possibilities for a Windows environment. If the shell they create is complete enough, you may not even need stupid "remote control" apps, instead you could just SSH into the box and take care of things.

On the other hand, I guess it just makes Windows easier to crack too ;)

Good news... kinda ;-)

[bumblebury]

Well, perhaps if windows users get used to using a shell, then the switch to UNIX won't be too hard for them, it certainly makes it easier for the Linux movement if there are more similiarities than differences between the windows *gui* and the linux *gui*, as a large majority of Linux's advantages are more in respects to the underlying architecture, philospy[1].

--

[1] Actually, I happen to think that the linux desktop is much better than the windows desktop, if you shy away from GNOME, KDE and try some of the non-standard desktops. I've been using WindowMaker on my laptop for a year now, and I see no reason to ever switch (it just fits the way I work). Furthermore, once you go shell, you never go back.

Needed at the Enterprise

[Chewster]

The thing is, this is sorely needed by Win32 to compete at the enterprise, so I'm not at all surprised they're doing it. Trying to stop/start Unix services remotely through ssh is a breeze. We gave up trying to use VNC (and others) remotely for Windows services since the performance was so bad.

There are 2 things I wonder about though:
1. Why is this only via .Net and not the full OS?
2. How much of the OS will be accessible via the prompt?

Kinda hard to tell by just the job posting. Neat to see though.

Re:MS is responsive: that's why they're #1

[grondu]

Responsive? How long has windows been around? And they're just now planning to have a full-featured shell...I'm glad the fire department isn't that responsive.

Yeah! More Backdoors!!!

[Lispy]

While some of the unixers try to make Linux look exactly like WinXP the evil empire is trying to make winnt feel more like a real OS. When they start using a machkernel it could get kinda stupid if Apple sues them for stealing their GUI in 1990 and stealing their architecture in 200x.

Well, who needs that anyway? Man, the screwed up on ActiveX, they couldn't fix the holes in Iexplore.exe and their latest scripttoy VB-script gave the Virus "Industry" it's biggest revival since 1985.

I'm looking forward to .net-shell based virii...coming soon to your desktop!

cu,
Lispy

sorry, but this won't help Windows either

[g4dget]

they're going to absolutely pummel any competitors on the server end.

Microsoft already has their own scripting environment, and you can already get the most popular shell environments (Bash, Korn) for Windows for free. It doesn't help, because the system just isn't built for scripting.

They've got stability, they've got security, and now they're gonna have good scripting. Wow. Who would'a thunk?

Very funny. XP can be fairly stable and secure--if you dedicate machines to individual tasks and disable most multiuser features. Running Apache and ssh helps, too. But, compared to UNIX and Linux, XP's stability and security are still ridiculously poor. And that's not because lacks features, it's because it has too many features.

in theory, but not in practice

[g4dget]

Yes, there are plenty of command line tools for system administration that come included with Windows. Nominally, you can do pretty much everything with them that you can from the GUI. In practice, however, you can't.

First of all, since most people use the GUI most of the time, if you want to move on to scripting, you have to learn both entirely new commands and figure out how to script them together. Not even the concepts and paradigms of how to manipulate the system are easily mapped onto one another.

Also, the command line tools don't seem to keep up with what's in the GUI, and any third party components that require administration often don't come with command line tools at all.

Finally, Windows doesn't ship with a lot of the glue necessary to make scripting work. Apart from the pathetic cmd.exe, most devices are not accessible through the file system and many important command line programs are just missing. Some come and go (NT used to come with pax.exe, but it seems to have disappeared now, leaving no archiver around).

Re:Cygwin

[joeykiller]

How this can be considered Insightful beats me. Cygwin is an attempt to create a Unix emulation layer on Windows, while this apparently describes a fully flegded .Net integrated shell enviroment for Windows.

If this is true, this will (in my opinion) give Windows a tremendously powerful and coherent (i.e. a single understandable object model and class library) scripting and shell environment.

Say what you will about Cygwin - I like Cygwin a lot and use it daily - but it cannot be said to be coherent and consisting of well integrated parts.

MacOSX, Applescript and why MS is doing this.

[theolein]

OSX has some of the functionality mentioned here in it's netinfo database, and system and programme defaults can be set through the defaults command which is based on xml. Applescript is a good glue between the CLI , System and other software.

What is interesting is MS' motivation behind this. It does seem as they are of the opinion that having an amazing shell will pull all the OSS crowd over to using Win instead of Linux/BSD/*NIX. Why I think it won't work, at least in the first few iterations, are because:
a.MS still has that licence problem which they would rather die than let go of.
b.You still have to pay extra $$$ for the whole bundle of extraneous shit that you don't need.
c.It will still be easier to script apps in VBA. 80% of the extra cludge, OO this , reflection that etc will go unused.

MS was at USENIX/SAGE asking what makes a good CLI

[furry_wookie]

FYI.. .I was at the USENIX/SAGE L.I.S.A Confrence 2002 [usenix.org] in Philly a few weeks ago, and some guys from Microsoft had a late night get together to talk to us unix people. I couldn't not go, after all it was Microsoft at a 100% NIX-only event, so I figured some fun would be had at their expense.. It was called: UNIX + Windows Admin Management with Scripting & Command Line: What are your requirements? [usenix.org], and was on thursday night. The point of the meeting is that, they wanted to know from UNIX admins what makes a good Command Line environment and what it would take to make Windows have as powerfull a CLI as Unix. They pretty much told us that there is a LARGE high-level project at Microsoft to make Windows servers to be as easy to manage and configure as Unix servers from a serial port with no gui required. What is their REAL goal: From what I could tell its simple... they want to eliminate the competitive advantage that UNIX has with the CLI. That this away from NIX as a "advantage", then thats one less think people can point to as something that Windows lacks. They want to be able to honsetly say... "Unix isnt any easier/more-powerful on the CLI than Windows." After all, that is one of the SINGLE LARGEST differences there are today between their product and NIX. Take that argument away, and you have a huge marketing/argument weapon against us NIX people.

Wouldn't it be interesting ...

[ninewands]

I defy Microsoft to be able to prove that a developer with " ... Windows NT or Windows 2000 system programming experience, ... as well as with scripting and shell languages like PERL, Python and Bash." and "2-5 years experience in high technology, preferably delivering products for both Windows and non-Windows operating systems." to be able to PROVE that any similarity to bash arose in a "cleanroom reverse engineering environment."

Imagine Stahlman winning a copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and Windows getting "infected" by the GPL ... it's be Microsoft's worst dream come true ... <VERY Evil Grin(TM)>

Re:wonder what this means

[IamTheRealMike]

Though I can't say I'm surprised, I think this is one of the first times where Microsoft seems to have stated that they are persuing similar technologies.

Actually, the next version of IIS has dropped the binary metabase and has replaced it with XML config files, so IIS can be administered by hand, just like Apache (but with a pretty GUI if you want one). Maybe as part of this next-gen shell they'll introduce a good command line text editor.

This sounds to me very much like Microsoft is having a good hard look at what Linux/open source does well, and copying it. Fair game - we've copied them plenty, and are continuing to do so. We could well find that Windows moves on a lot thanks to the competition offered by Linux: will we be able to keep up, and keep pushing things forward to? I think so. I hope so. But the era of kicking Windows for being unstable is already over, insecure looks on its way out (I read coders can get fired now for writing insecure code at redmond), and soon traditional UNIX strongholds like good remote administration may no longer be unique either.

We have our own stupid problems to fix too of course. Lack of a decent object model? Lack of binary portability? That one is killing us at the moment, and there is no good solution (as I'm finding out as part of my project). We really really don't want to have to setup build farms (a binary for every distro version), that'd suck. But it seems the very nature of Linux itself dictates it. Now Windows is moving to .NET they are tidying up a lot of these problems, while we're still playing catchup.

It's certainly going to get interesting soon. Microsoft have sort of woken up.

Microsoft LISA 2002 Scripting BOF

[tubaman24]

Jim Truher from Microsoft had an informal Birds-Of-a-Feather session [usenix.org] at LISA 2002. I showed up because I wanted to see this guy squirm a little (LISA is almost all UNIX/Linux folk). He claimed to be one of the designers of this new shell and he wanted our input about the most needed features. He mentioned created a language similar to PERL only better(i.e. proprietary). Full transaction support was suggested as well to allow a multilevel "undo" capability.

Re:So, we're back to the 60's.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people don't even realize that you can iterate through files with one command in DOS.

for %1 in (*.jpg) do convert -resize 128x128 %1 thumbnail/%1

Re:Well that's nice

[orangesquid]

No, see, that's the point. Microsoft doesn't support Linux, but Linux people want some of the things Microsoft provides for Windows, so we have created our own. It's not innovation. I have never seen any open source programmer consider cloning proprietary software innovation. Major innovation (totally new ways of doing things) is usually somewhat rare in software created by hobbyists because companies generally spend thousands on research-and-development costs to majorly innovate. Open source is full of minor innovations, though (clever hacks, minor improvements, small enhancements), that can make the difference between software being a pain to use and a joy to use.

Microsoft is infamous for speaking so highly of their innovation while usually only performing minor innovation (many of their products are simple improvements on another company's software, or were straight-out bought from other companies which does not constitute innovation in any form). If you are going to talk of how innovative you are, come up with some really-damn-new, really-damn-good ideas on your own!

Re:Best tools for jobs

[Tablizer]

(* The killer argument in favor of what you already have is that a robust SQL engine that would fit on a bootable floppy would probably be software art of Knuthian proportions. *)

dBASE used to fit on a CPM floppy. True, it was not fully relational, but close enough in most cases. The biggest problem with a compact relational query engine is the bloated SQL syntax. Get rid of SQL, not relational. Define queries in smaller chunks, Function Programming-like. Competitors to SQL did that once, but for some odd reason SQL won. Probably because of it is allegedly more English like. But that same goal bloated COBOL in similar ways. SQL is the COBOL of relational query languages.

Re:Cygwin

[knighten]

RedHat deserves praise and support for Cygwin, but describing Cywin as "a UNIX environment, developed by Red Hat, for Windows." is misleading on several fronts. First it is primarily a port of the GNU toolset to Windows, it isn't UNIX (which is still a trademark), and it was developed by Cygnus well before they were bought by Red Hat.