A lot of us here programmers reeeeaallllyy love the dev experience on Linux.
Unfortunately, our job at $CURRENT_JOB does not always allow us to use the tools that we would like to use. (Am I right or am I right...)
More often than not, you'll have to use Windows.
I know right ?
- Forget about using the ;oh so amazing; Fish shell...
- Want to use the marvelous starship.rs prompt for your favorite shell and take advantage of automatic environnement shell adjustments ? Foggetaboutit.
- You've grown the habit of using the ubiquitous pipes, GNU coreutils, and shell goodness you find on (mostly) POSIX-compatible OSes ?
All things good seem close on your Enterprise-Ready, VPN-secured and McAfee-protected computer. But somehow, they're always unattainable.
You can thank your local GPO and WAF for that.
The solution
Guess what ! I found a solution. And no, it's not WSL2.
You know, that thing ? Yeah that one, Powershell.
I know you don't want to use it, I know it feels foreign to the tools you're used to. But you don't really have a choice, do you ?
It's actually pretty nice once you get used to it (and tweak it a lot). It's not gonna give you that warm, fuzzy feeling that using FOSS (stands for Free and Open Source Software) gives you but it's will allow you to work without that little voice going in your head :
You could be doing this a better way....wayy ...waaayyy....
That solution comes in multiple steps:
- Update your Powershell command line so that it uses PSReadLine (a GNU readline-inspired command line)
- Install starship.rs and setup Powershell to use it (yay it's actually cross-platform thanks to Rust !)
- Install a truckload of Rust alternative to GNU coreutils
- Install a ;good; package manager : scoop
Installing scoop (this is the best and most useful part)
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser # Optional: Needed to run a remote script the first time
irm get.scoop.sh | iex
# you'll probably need to close and reopen your terminal here
scoop install git
scoop bucket add extrasInstalling PSReadline
As easy as A-B-C :
Install-Module -Name PSReadLine -AllowClobber -ForceThat's it !
Setting up Starship
This is all pretty simple :
scoop install starship
echo "Invoke-Expression (&starship init powershell)" >> $PROFILERusting it up
There isn't a specific recommended list of Rust CLI tools that you should install but I have my personal favorite :
ripgrep : https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
A modern alternative to grep. It's generally much faster and more intuitive to use.
fd : https://github.com/sharkdp/fd
As the description on their Github page says :
A simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to 'find'
What else could I add ?
fzf : https://github.com/junegunn/fzf (this one is not Rust, it's Go)
🌸 A command-line fuzzy finder
Great way to find your file through heaps of directories quickly.
If you're interested in getting more Rust-based coreutils alternatives, see https://github.com/matu3ba/awesome-cli-rust