Re: [RFC PATCH 02/28] cli: Add LIL shell

Wolfgang Denk
2021-07-03T19:23:25Z

Dear Sean,

In message <c8e20c0c-bcf0-4692-6a8b-0c4ea970b656@gmail.com> you wrote:
> >
> > Do you have a list of the exact differencec between LIL and a
> > standard shell?
>
> For a partial list, see
>
> [1] https://github.com/Forty-Bot/lil/commits/master

Hm, this list of commits is not exactly helpful, I'm afraid.

Where _exactly_ should I look?

> > I wonder, if we deviate from standard shell syntax anyway, we could
> > also have a look at lua, for example?
>
> I also looked at lua (see the cover letter), but I rejected it based on
> size constraints (eLua was around the size of U-Boot itself).

I have to admit that I never tried myself to build a lua based
system, optimizing for minimal size - but I'm surprised by your
results.

> Because of how often the shell is used to debug things, I wanted the
> candidate I picked to have similar syntax to the existing shell. For
> example,
>
> load mmc ${mmcdev}:${mmcpart} $loadaddr $image
>
> is a valid command in both Hush and LIL. Compare with lua, which might
> express the above as

Yes, I'm aware of this. But then, it would add another level of
powerful scripting capabilities - and as it was already suggested
before, _replacing_ the standard shell is only one way to use lua -
another would be to use lua as a command that can be started from
the shell when needed - assuming you want to pay the price in terms
of size.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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