INSTALL.txt

Building and Installing OSH
===========================

OSH is a bash-compatible shell and is part of the Oil project
(http://www.oilshell.org).

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 --xz < oil-0.9.5.tar.xz
    cd oil-0.9.5

Either install as /usr/local/bin/osh:

    ./configure      # completes very quickly
    make             # 30-60 seconds
    sudo ./install

or install as ~/bin/osh and the man page as ~/.local/share/man/man1/osh.1:

    ./configure --prefix ~ --datarootdir ~/.local/share
    make
    ./install

The latter 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
oil-0.9.5 directory.

Smoke Test
----------

OSH behaves like a POSIX shell:

    $ osh -c 'echo hi'
    hi

This parses and prints a syntax tree for the 'configure' script.

    osh -n configure

More Documentation
------------------

Every release has a home page with links, e.g.

    https://oilshell.org/release/0.9.5/

System Requirements
-------------------

Roughly speaking, you need:

  - an ANSI C environment (compiler and libc)
  - GNU Bash
  - GNU Make.

(I want to remove the GNU requirements and require only POSIX sh instead).

Optional:

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

Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives:

    sudo apt install build-essential libreadline-dev

Alpine Linux:

    apk add libc-dev gcc bash make readline-dev

OSH has been tested in 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

Build Options
-------------

./configure --help will show the options.  Right now, the only significant
options are --prefix and --{with,without}-readline.

Notes
-----

- The oil.ovm executable behaves like busybox, and osh is a symlink to it.
- Oil contains a fork of the Python 2.7 runtime, so it should compile with most
  popular compiler/OS combinations.

TODO
----

- Add back build support for PGO and LTO and document them.  (CPython has
  this.)