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Building and Installing Oils

Oils is a new Unix shell. This file describes how to configure, build, and install it from source code.

Quick Start

If you haven't already done so, extract the tarball:

tar -x --gz < oil-for-unix-0.22.0.tar.gz
cd oils-for-unix-0.22.0

This is the traditional way to install it:

./configure      # completes very quickly
_build/oils.sh   # 30-60 seconds
sudo ./install

You'll end up with an oils-for-unix binary and two symlinks:

/usr/local/bin/   
  oils-for-unix
  osh -> oils-for-unix
  ysh -> oils-for-unix

This structure is similar to the busybox tool.

Smoke Test

OSH behaves like a POSIX shell:

$ osh -c 'echo hi'
hi

The -n flag parses and prints a syntax tree for the 'configure' script:

osh -n configure

YSH is a legacy-free shell, with structured data:

$ ysh -c 'echo hi'
hi

$ ysh -c 'json write ({x: 42})'
{
  "x": 42
}

More Documentation

Every release has a home page with links:

https://oilshell.org/release/0.22.0/

System Requirements

Oils is designed to have very few dependencies. You need:

• A C++11 compiler
  • with libc and libstdc++
• A POSIX shell to invoke _build/oils.sh

Optional:

• GNU readline library, for interactive features (https://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html)

Build deps on Debian-like distros, including Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libreadline-dev

Alpine Linux:

apk add libc-dev gcc readline-dev

Oils has been tested on several Linux distros and OS X. It aims to run on any POSIX system. If it doesn't, file a bug here:

https://github.com/oilshell/oil/issues

Non-root Install

You can run the binary in-place, e.g.

$ _bin/cxx-opt-sh/osh -c 'echo hi'
hi

Or you can install into ~/bin, with the man page at ~/.local/share/man/man1/osh.1:

./configure --prefix ~ --datarootdir ~/.local/share
_build/oils.sh
./install

This doesn't require root access, but it requires:

• ~/bin to be in your $PATH
• Pages under ~/.local/share/man to be found by 'man'. (See manpath or $MANPATH.)

NOTE: Out-of-tree builds are NOT currently supported, so you have to be in the oils-for-unix-0.22.0 directory.

Build Options

Show options with:

./configure --help 

Common flags:

--prefix
--with-readline
--without-readline
--readline  # the location

Links

• Notes on portability: https://oilshell.org/release/0.22.0/doc/portability.html