Oils Packaging Guidelines - oils-for-unix/oils GitHub Wiki

Tips and Naming

  • The latest release is at: https://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/
  • Please call the package oils-for-unix
  • Invoking ./install _bin/cxx-opt-sh/oils-for-unix at the root of source tree will install the executable oils-for-unix.
  • It will also install symlinks osh and ysh to that executable, in the style of busybox.
    • osh is very compatible with POSIX sh and bash, while ysh flips some switches to make it a coherent new language.
  • Description: Oils is a Unix shell with JSON-compatible structured data. It's our upgrade path from bash to a better language and runtime.
  • Longer Description:
    • bin/osh runs POSIX shell scripts and many bash scripts. bin/ysh is an improved shell language.

Help on the Build System

See https://oils.pub/release/latest/doc/help-mirror.html

2025-04 - Version 0.29.0 Update: The oil-$VERSION tarball was renamed oils-ref-$VERSION

The recommended tarball is oils-for-unix-$VERSION, not oil-$VERSION

Some people were using the old oil tarball, which is obsolete (as of 2024)

oils-ref should not be packaged. It is for people who want to verify that Oils has an "executable spec" that runs under CPython. It is not meant to be used.

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