A new type of shell
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Devyn Cairns 1a5bf2447a
Use Arc for environment variables on the stack (#13333)
# Description

This is another easy performance lift that just changes `env_vars` and
`env_hidden` on `Stack` to use `Arc`. I noticed that these were being
cloned on essentially every closure invocation during captures
gathering, so we're paying the cost for all of that even when we don't
change anything. On top of that, for `env_vars`, there's actually an
entirely fresh `HashMap` created for each child scope, so it's highly
unlikely that we'll modify the parent ones.

Uses `Arc::make_mut` instead to take care of things when we need to
mutate something, and most of the time nothing has to be cloned at all.

# Benchmarks

The benefits are greater the more calls there are to env-cloning
functions like `captures_to_stack()`. Calling custom commands in a loop
is basically best case for a performance improvement. Plain `each` with
a literal block isn't so badly affected because the stack is set up
once.

## random_bytes.nu

```nushell
use std bench
do {
  const SCRIPT = ../nu_scripts/benchmarks/random-bytes.nu
  let before_change = bench { nu $SCRIPT }
  let after_change = bench { target/release/nu $SCRIPT }
  {
    before: ($before_change | reject times),
    after: ($after_change | reject times)
  }
}
```

```
╭────────┬──────────────────────────────╮
│        │ ╭──────┬───────────────────╮ │
│ before │ │ mean │ 603ms 759µs 727ns │ │
│        │ │ min  │ 593ms 298µs 167ns │ │
│        │ │ max  │ 648ms 612µs 291ns │ │
│        │ │ std  │ 9ms 335µs 251ns   │ │
│        │ ╰──────┴───────────────────╯ │
│        │ ╭──────┬───────────────────╮ │
│ after  │ │ mean │ 518ms 400µs 557ns │ │
│        │ │ min  │ 507ms 762µs 583ns │ │
│        │ │ max  │ 566ms 695µs 166ns │ │
│        │ │ std  │ 9ms 554µs 767ns   │ │
│        │ ╰──────┴───────────────────╯ │
╰────────┴──────────────────────────────╯
```

## gradient_benchmark_no_check.nu

```nushell
use std bench
do {
  const SCRIPT = ../nu_scripts/benchmarks/gradient_benchmark_no_check.nu
  let before_change = bench { nu $SCRIPT }
  let after_change = bench { target/release/nu $SCRIPT }
  {
    before: ($before_change | reject times),
    after: ($after_change | reject times)
  }
}
```

```
╭────────┬──────────────────────────────╮
│        │ ╭──────┬───────────────────╮ │
│ before │ │ mean │ 146ms 543µs 380ns │ │
│        │ │ min  │ 142ms 416µs 166ns │ │
│        │ │ max  │ 189ms 595µs       │ │
│        │ │ std  │ 7ms 140µs 342ns   │ │
│        │ ╰──────┴───────────────────╯ │
│        │ ╭──────┬───────────────────╮ │
│ after  │ │ mean │ 134ms 211µs 678ns │ │
│        │ │ min  │ 132ms 433µs 125ns │ │
│        │ │ max  │ 135ms 722µs 583ns │ │
│        │ │ std  │ 793µs 134ns       │ │
│        │ ╰──────┴───────────────────╯ │
╰────────┴──────────────────────────────╯
```

# User-Facing Changes
Better performance, particularly for custom commands, especially if
there are a lot of environment variables. Nothing else.

# Tests + Formatting
All passing.
2024-07-10 17:34:50 -07:00
.cargo optimize aarch64 when able (#10433) 2023-09-21 03:57:07 +12:00
.githooks Add git hooks for formatting and running clippy (#8820) 2023-04-13 07:34:23 -05:00
.github Bump crate-ci/typos from 1.22.9 to 1.23.1 (#13328) 2024-07-09 19:53:46 -05:00
assets REFACTOR: clean the root of the repo (#9231) 2023-05-20 07:57:51 -05:00
benches Internal representation (IR) compiler and evaluator (#13330) 2024-07-10 17:33:59 -07:00
crates Use Arc for environment variables on the stack (#13333) 2024-07-10 17:34:50 -07:00
devdocs Remove dataframes crate and feature (#12889) 2024-05-20 17:22:08 +00:00
docker remove the deprecated register command (#13297) 2024-07-05 07:16:50 -05:00
scripts Fix main binary being rebuilt when nothing has changed (#13337) 2024-07-10 18:05:24 -05:00
src Internal representation (IR) compiler and evaluator (#13330) 2024-07-10 17:33:59 -07:00
tests Internal representation (IR) compiler and evaluator (#13330) 2024-07-10 17:33:59 -07:00
wix change wix install method from perMachine to perUser (#12720) 2024-05-01 17:31:16 -05:00
.gitattributes Add Nushell Language detect for linguist (#9491) 2023-06-21 15:30:10 +08:00
.gitignore Add custom datetime format through strftime strings (#9500) 2023-06-23 15:05:04 -05:00
Cargo.lock Internal representation (IR) compiler and evaluator (#13330) 2024-07-10 17:33:59 -07:00
Cargo.toml Internal representation (IR) compiler and evaluator (#13330) 2024-07-10 17:33:59 -07:00
CITATION.cff Create CITATION.cff (#12983) 2024-06-06 08:53:34 +08:00
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md First pass at updating all documentation formatting and cleaning up output of examples (#2031) 2020-06-24 06:21:47 +12:00
CONTRIBUTING.md Remove dataframes crate and feature (#12889) 2024-05-20 17:22:08 +00:00
Cross.toml Fix cross-compiling with cross-rs (#9972) 2023-08-09 22:08:35 -07:00
LICENSE Update LICENSE 2023-04-03 08:23:19 +12:00
README.md Update README.md (#13157) 2024-06-18 07:16:42 -05:00
rust-toolchain.toml Bump our Rust version to stable (#12471) 2024-04-10 23:41:38 +02:00
toolkit.nu Extend functionality of tango benchmark helpers (#13107) 2024-06-09 14:03:52 +03:00
typos.toml Add typed path forms (#13115) 2024-06-25 18:33:57 -07:00

Nushell

Crates.io Build Status Nightly Build Discord The Changelog #363 @nu_shell GitHub commit activity GitHub contributors

A new type of shell.

Example of nushell

Table of Contents

Status

This project has reached a minimum-viable-product level of quality. Many people use it as their daily driver, but it may be unstable for some commands. Nu's design is subject to change as it matures.

Learning About Nu

The Nushell book is the primary source of Nushell documentation. You can find a full list of Nu commands in the book, and we have many examples of using Nu in our cookbook.

We're also active on Discord and Twitter; come and chat with us!

Installation

To quickly install Nu:

# Linux and macOS
brew install nushell
# Windows
winget install nushell

To use Nu in GitHub Action, check setup-nu for more detail.

Detailed installation instructions can be found in the installation chapter of the book. Nu is available via many package managers:

Packaging status

For details about which platforms the Nushell team actively supports, see our platform support policy.

Configuration

The default configurations can be found at sample_config which are the configuration files one gets when they startup Nushell for the first time.

It sets all of the default configuration to run Nushell. From here one can then customize this file for their specific needs.

To see where config.nu is located on your system simply type this command.

$nu.config-path

Please see our book for all of the Nushell documentation.

Philosophy

Nu draws inspiration from projects like PowerShell, functional programming languages, and modern CLI tools. Rather than thinking of files and data as raw streams of text, Nu looks at each input as something with structure. For example, when you list the contents of a directory what you get back is a table of rows, where each row represents an item in that directory. These values can be piped through a series of steps, in a series of commands called a 'pipeline'.

Pipelines

In Unix, it's common to pipe between commands to split up a sophisticated command over multiple steps. Nu takes this a step further and builds heavily on the idea of pipelines. As in the Unix philosophy, Nu allows commands to output to stdout and read from stdin. Additionally, commands can output structured data (you can think of this as a third kind of stream). Commands that work in the pipeline fit into one of three categories:

  • Commands that produce a stream (e.g., ls)
  • Commands that filter a stream (e.g., where type == "dir")
  • Commands that consume the output of the pipeline (e.g., table)

Commands are separated by the pipe symbol (|) to denote a pipeline flowing left to right.

> ls | where type == "dir" | table
╭────┬──────────┬──────┬─────────┬───────────────╮
│ #  │   name   │ type │  size   │   modified    │
├────┼──────────┼──────┼─────────┼───────────────┤
│  0 │ .cargo   │ dir  │     0 B │ 9 minutes ago │
│  1 │ assets   │ dir  │     0 B │ 2 weeks ago   │
│  2 │ crates   │ dir  │ 4.0 KiB │ 2 weeks ago   │
│  3 │ docker   │ dir  │     0 B │ 2 weeks ago   │
│  4 │ docs     │ dir  │     0 B │ 2 weeks ago   │
│  5 │ images   │ dir  │     0 B │ 2 weeks ago   │
│  6 │ pkg_mgrs │ dir  │     0 B │ 2 weeks ago   │
│  7 │ samples  │ dir  │     0 B │ 2 weeks ago   │
│  8 │ src      │ dir  │ 4.0 KiB │ 2 weeks ago   │
│  9 │ target   │ dir  │     0 B │ a day ago     │
│ 10 │ tests    │ dir  │ 4.0 KiB │ 2 weeks ago   │
│ 11 │ wix      │ dir  │     0 B │ 2 weeks ago   │
╰────┴──────────┴──────┴─────────┴───────────────╯

Because most of the time you'll want to see the output of a pipeline, table is assumed. We could have also written the above:

> ls | where type == "dir"

Being able to use the same commands and compose them differently is an important philosophy in Nu. For example, we could use the built-in ps command to get a list of the running processes, using the same where as above.

> ps | where cpu > 0
╭───┬───────┬───────────┬───────┬───────────┬───────────╮
│ # │  pid  │   name    │  cpu  │    mem    │  virtual  │
├───┼───────┼───────────┼───────┼───────────┼───────────┤
│ 02240 │ Slack.exe │ 16.40 │ 178.3 MiB │ 232.6 MiB │
│ 116948 │ Slack.exe │ 16.32 │ 205.0 MiB │ 197.9 MiB │
│ 217700 │ nu.exe    │  3.77 │  26.1 MiB │   8.8 MiB │
╰───┴───────┴───────────┴───────┴───────────┴───────────╯

Opening files

Nu can load file and URL contents as raw text or structured data (if it recognizes the format). For example, you can load a .toml file as structured data and explore it:

> open Cargo.toml
╭──────────────────┬────────────────────╮
│ bin              │ [table 1 row]      │
│ dependencies     │ {record 25 fields} │
│ dev-dependencies │ {record 8 fields}  │
│ features         │ {record 10 fields} │
│ package          │ {record 13 fields} │
│ patch            │ {record 1 field}   │
│ profile          │ {record 3 fields}  │
│ target           │ {record 3 fields}  │
│ workspace        │ {record 1 field}   │
╰──────────────────┴────────────────────╯

We can pipe this into a command that gets the contents of one of the columns:

> open Cargo.toml | get package
╭───────────────┬────────────────────────────────────╮
│ authors       │ [list 1 item]                      │
│ default-run   │ nu                                 │
│ description   │ A new type of shell                │
│ documentation │ https://www.nushell.sh/book/       │
│ edition       │ 2018                               │
│ exclude       │ [list 1 item]                      │
│ homepage      │ https://www.nushell.sh             │
│ license       │ MIT                                │
│ metadata      │ {record 1 field}                   │
│ name          │ nu                                 │
│ repository    │ https://github.com/nushell/nushell │
│ rust-version  │ 1.60                               │
│ version       │ 0.72.0                             │
╰───────────────┴────────────────────────────────────╯

And if needed we can drill down further:

> open Cargo.toml | get package.version
0.72.0

Plugins

Nu supports plugins that offer additional functionality to the shell and follow the same structured data model that built-in commands use. There are a few examples in the crates/nu_plugins_* directories.

Plugins are binaries that are available in your path and follow a nu_plugin_* naming convention. These binaries interact with nu via a simple JSON-RPC protocol where the command identifies itself and passes along its configuration, making it available for use. If the plugin is a filter, data streams to it one element at a time, and it can stream data back in return via stdin/stdout. If the plugin is a sink, it is given the full vector of final data and is given free reign over stdin/stdout to use as it pleases.

The awesome-nu repo lists a variety of nu-plugins while the showcase repo shows off informative blog posts that have been written about Nushell along with videos that highlight technical topics that have been presented.

Goals

Nu adheres closely to a set of goals that make up its design philosophy. As features are added, they are checked against these goals.

  • First and foremost, Nu is cross-platform. Commands and techniques should work across platforms and Nu has first-class support for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

  • Nu ensures compatibility with existing platform-specific executables.

  • Nu's workflow and tools should have the usability expected of modern software in 2022 (and beyond).

  • Nu views data as either structured or unstructured. It is a structured shell like PowerShell.

  • Finally, Nu views data functionally. Rather than using mutation, pipelines act as a means to load, change, and save data without mutable state.

Officially Supported By

Please submit an issue or PR to be added to this list.

Contributing

See Contributing for details. Thanks to all the people who already contributed!

License

The project is made available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more information.