That library is just a simple implementation of some basic commands. It does not do any executable execution, it does not use the real system utilities. Nor does it has anything to do with Bash, or shell scripts. It’s just basically one big ‘switch’ for all commands, which are implemented in the app itself.
Glad to see the developer who reserved the name was able to put it to good use. Almost all built-in MacoS app names have been taken on the iOS store [1].
You can't fork() in App Store apps. Which is why all of the commands on the linked Terminal app are built-ins. So a bash-like of sorts could be made to work, but it would be very different and quite limited.
Curl exists, so you could run bash if you can figure out some way to give it an executable bit (chmod doesn't exist), unless iOS refuses to run executables at all unless they're signed?
iOS refuses to run executable at all if unsigned. In fact, iOS restricts regular apps from calling fork() and exec() so you won't even have a chance to try.
I thought Apple significantly relaxed the rules on running external code inside an app. Pythonista is pretty powerful these days. So I'd be hopeful a full shell with scripting support could make it into the store (still sandboxed, of course)
This is awesome - thank you! Love being able to download files via curl and search with grep under iOS. Any chance of adding a basic text editor (vi, pico, or even ed) and maintaining history across launches?
I think having a separate app for editing files makes more sense on iOS. There's iVim, for example (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ivim/id1266544660?mt=8).
Maintaining history sounds like a neat feature, thanks for your feedback!
Would it be possible to have an 'open' command that opens any file in their respective app? Maybe even configurable aliases like 'vim' to open files in a specific app (iVim) -- hence my other comment about support for a .bashrc
What I had in mind was basically FUSE (like https://github.com/joe42/CloudFusion). I don't think it would violate sandboxing, but it's probably very non-trivial to implement in this kind of app
My person impression is: not really at this time. But it's a pretty amazing proof of concept, and could grow into something immensely useful (a full local shell). I'm really glad this is open source, so there is the potential for people to contribute more substantial functionality.
It says on the next line: "Unrestricted Web Access". The App Store rules say if you can use it to download arbitrary web content, it's gotta be 17+. Otherwise, age restrictions would be pretty much meaningless.
Yea. And the name is very similar to MacOS’s Terminal.app which is developed by Apple. Might want to update the title to reflect that it’s third party.
