Agnostic

Agnostic is an attempt to implement the unix user interface (shell + common programs) in Javascript.

The long-term goal is to provide a web-based educational environment for users to experiment with the unix user interface, and provide structured tutorials (akin to http://try.github.com, http://codeacademy.com, etc.).

Demo at: http://agnostic.housegordon.org .

Current Status

1. POSIX shell interface.

   • Implemented:
     • posix-compliant tokenizing, shell-quotes, field-splitting.
     • variable assignment (CC=clang)
     • parameter expansion ($HOME),
     • partial arithmetic expressions ($((42/9)))
     • Subshells (NAME=$(basename "$FILE" .txt))
     • Pipes (seq 10 | wc -l),
     • And/Or operations (make && echo ok || echo failed)
     • Sequential commands ( sleep 10 ; touch 1.txt )
     • Compound commands ( make || { echo make failed ; exit 1 ; } )
     • some Special built-in utilities ( export, readonly, set, unset).
   • Not yet implemented:
     • redirection
     • filename-expansion
     • control structures (if,case,while,etc.)
     • Parameter expansion string operations ( ${FOO:-BAR} )
     • aliases
     • multiline statements
     • Here-Documents

2. POSIX utilities

   • (almost) fully implemented: basename, cat, cut, dirname, echo, false, head, printf, seq, tac, tail, true, wc
   • partialyl implemented: date
   • not yet implemented (but planned): paste, env, grep, find, xargs
   • Challenging but highly desired: sed, awk.

3. Local execution (mainly for testing) using NodeJS.

4. Web-based execution, with "terminal-like" behavior implemented in Javascript.

Try it

1. Locally with NodeJS:

    $ npm install -g browserify
    $ npm install -g pegjs
    $ npm install -g uglify-js@1
    $ git clone https://github.com/agordon/agnostic
    $ cd agnostic
    $ ./shell
   

   The ./shell script will start an interactive-shell session, emulating a 'real' unix shell environment, except it will all be running using javascript. Try running some command (e.g. seq 10 | wc -l) and compare the output to a real unix environment.

2. Web - visit one of the following:

   • Terminal Emulation Page - A demo of interactive shell session in a dumb terminal, with minimal command-line editing.
   • Shell Parser - A demo of the shell syntax parser output (without actual execution).

Project Goals

When/If the project is ever done, it will have:

• Client-side, browser-based Console/Terminal/Command-line emulation interface.
• Complete (or near-complete) POSIX Shell parsing capabilities.
• Partial implementation unix programs (e.g. seq, cut, sort, head, grep), enough to run typical unix commands inside the Javascript emulation environment.
• Classes / Lessons
  • Teaching the many aspects of UNIX environment: parameters, long/short options, redirection, pipes, etc.
  • Domain-specific lessons (e.g. UNIX for bioinformatics)
• UNIX command-line demystifier: users could paste a unix-command line, and have different parts of it explained (e.g. what does grep -iw foo | cut -f3,5 | sort -k2n,2 | uniq -c > foo.txt do?)

Technical goals

• free as in speech: code and lesson plans will be available under GPLv3 (or later).
• Lessons, classes should be easy enough to add, with minimal programming requirements.
• Lessons and classes and programs should have translatable strings.
• The project should be able to include any command-line program, even if implemented as an empty stub.
• for more details, see PLANS.md file.

Helping out

The project is in very early development stage, and many details are not yet set. If you're interested in helping, send me an email. Also see PLANS.md and HACKING.md files for details.

Requirements

To run / hack the project, you'll need:

• NodeJS
• npm (NodeJS's package manager)
• The following NPM packages:
  • PEGjs - Parser Generator for Javascript
  • Browserify - Bundles Javascript modules for browser usage.
  • UglifyJS - Javascript minifier
• jq - (optional) for pretty JSON printing.

Contact

Assaf Gordon [email protected]

License

All code written for this project is released under GPLv3 or later.

The code uses multiple libraries, with varying free/open-source licenses, see LICENSE file for details.