I am actively working on a clink update

[chrisant996]

I forked to chrisant996/clink and am actively working on an update.

When the fork is ready for beta testing, I'll post in this thread. I don't have an ETA, and I'm not date driven. It could be weeks or months.

High level view:

• I'm using master head (v1.0.0a1) as the starting point.
• I'm not date driven: This will take as long as it takes, and quality matters to me.
• It's a side project and I'm prioritizing what affects my own usage.
• Backward compatibility:
  • I'll add back the 0.4.8 syntax for prompt filtering. I like the new 1.0.0 syntax better, so I'll make both work.
  • I expect to be able to do something similar for argmatcher syntax as well.
• I'm adding many new features (some highlights listed further below).
• I'm fixing as many existing issues as I can. Once my own needs are finished, I'll work my way through the Issues list to see what's still relevant, etc (there's a lot of overlap, and I've already fixed some issues).
  • Note: 1.0.0a1 rewrote many things and has a different set of bugs than 0.4.8; reporting new issues in 0.4.8 probably won't be very useful, and I recommend waiting until I have a new beta ready.

New feature highlights (some working, some in progress, some pending):

• Scrolling - make it bindable, and scrolling up/down by 1 line
• Fixed Ctrl-Backspace and Ctrl-Space
• Added support for various modifiers on Space and Tab
• Fixing unbound key garbled input
• Added an option to support backslashes properly (for those of us who want CMD to still feel like Windows)
• Several input features similar to 4Dos/4NT/TakeCommand from JPSoft (e.g. delete from history, add to history without executing)
• Option to sort directories before files in completion match list
• CUA input editing (e.g. Shift-Arrows to select text) -- either by allowing conhost to handle it, or by adding native support
• Key binding to expand doskey alias
• Key binding to expand environment variable
• Proper doskey alias processing
• Option and/or key binding to paste newlines from the clipboard (e.g. if the clipboard has 3 lines on it, paste will execute 3 lines)
• Colorize arguments recognized by lua argmatcher scripts (similar to colored arguments and flags in PowerShell)
• Stretch goal: address the prompt delay in large git repos (I work in a large git repo). Essentially make it possible for a prompt filter script to quickly emit a placeholder prompt, but do longer running work asynchronously to e.g. check git status, and then retroactively refresh the most recent prompt.
• ... and more ...

[Slach]

@chrisant996 thanks a lot for your efforts ;)

[garoto]

Holy shit, a guy who can code C and is not afraid of the Windows API continuing clink is literally a "dream come true" scenario to me.

Having said that, if possible, please try and don't forget people running what might be considered "legacy" Windows versions by now, which might include at least Windows 8.1 I guess?

Anyways, good luck and have fun right?

[chrisant996]

Having said that, if possible, please try and don't forget people running what might be considered "legacy" Windows versions by now, which might include at least Windows 8.1 I guess?

Backward compatibility is an important value for me.

[GPopZach]

Holy shit, a guy who can code C and is not afraid of the Windows API continuing clink is a literally a dream come true scenario to me.

Having said that, if possible, please try and don't forget people running what might be considered "legacy" Windows versions by now, which might include at least Windows 8.1 I guess?

Anyways, good luck and have fun right?

I can’t think of a single valid reason for anyone to be running Windows 7/8 at this point. If your machine can run those, it can run 10, and the upgrade was free for damn near two years and you can still get it free if you poke around Microsoft’s website enough. Backwards compatibility is great, but having to support legacy BS is the source of almost all problems with modern Windows.

But if I’m just a cynic, do correct me, I sure as heck don’t know everything 😅

[chrisant996]

having to support legacy

It's a matter of not introducing regressions as a side effect of trying to make things better. I embrace it as a matter of principle and coding hygiene. There are many valid styles; this is just my style. It's kind of a "do no harm" policy.

If an extreme case arose where it were somehow impossible or immensely expensive to maintain functionality on both "old" and "new" OS versions, then a pragmatic compromise could be found. I'm not concerned about the cost of maintaining backward compatibility; that's routine for me on several projects, and it's second nature.

[TheBrenny]

💎 Legendary.

Saw Proper doskey alias processing on the list and assumed that doskey /history might be back in action?! Take my money!

In seriousness though, perhaps this thread should be highlighted on the front page readme? It's been just over 2 years since the last commit, and if you're starting from where Mridg left off, then it seems like fair play (also considering it's GPL v3)?

Thoughts @mridgers?

[chrisant996]

Martin has been gone a long time, and it isn't possible for anyone else to modify the repo.

That's why I'm making notes in issues that are addressed in my fork.

Also, it's unlikely doskey /history would work since it's a completely different history system. Use history instead to list clink history.

[DRSDavidSoft]

Colorize arguments recognized by lua argmatcher scripts (similar to colored arguments and flags in PowerShell)

This is something that I've always wanted since the introduction of Powershell, I'd love to see colorized arguments (and even valid commands) in Clink. I think others will appreciate it as well!

[MagicAndre1981]

opening "Android adb cmd prompt" from inside Visual Studio crashes cmd if I use your fork 🤔

[chrisant996]

opening "Android adb cmd prompt" from inside Visual Studio crashes cmd if I use your fork 🤔

Interesting. Can you please open an issue in my fork, and add more information?

• What version+commit are you using from my fork? There have been various crashing bugs fixed recently, so it might even be a known and fixed crash.
• Can you capture and share a callstack or minidump from the crash?
• Is there a more general way to reproduce the crash? I don't do Android development and don't have any of that installed.
• Did you install clink with autorun, is that how it's getting involved when opening Android adb cmd prompt?

[MagicAndre1981]

I use the Proof of Concept 3 version and copied the files to old clink install folder and replaced all files. normal cmd worked, but as I use the android cmd often, I reverted to clink from martin.

Here is command line of android prompt:

"C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe" /K cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk" & set PATH=%PATH%;"C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools"

You can get the standalone platform tools without Xamarin workload of VS to repro and debug it

[chrisant996]

I use the Proof of Concept 3 version and copied the files to old clink install folder and replaced all files. normal cmd worked, but as I use the android cmd often, I reverted to clink from martin.

MagicAndre1981 can you please create a new issue in my fork so we can track this properly.

I need more information, and I don't want to continue hijacking this other issue because that makes it very difficult to track things.

[MagicAndre1981]

done: https://github.com/chrisant996/clink/issues/11

[chrisant996]

Update: Clink v1.1.15 pre-release build is available at https://github.com/chrisant996/clink. It's very close to being ready for an official release version.

[chrisant996]

I figured I would add an update here. The new Clink fork started releasing official builds a couple weeks ago.

chrisant996/clink