Yori: CMD reimagined

June 9, 2020 9:05 AM

Yori is the CMD replacement you never knew that you needed.

Featuring:
* Suggestions as you type
* Ctrl+Click to select values
* Better tab completion
* Background jobs

and more! Add it to your Windows Terminal.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock (25 comments total)

What on earth is a CMD?
posted by egypturnash at 9:10 AM on June 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

cmd is the command interpreter for Windows.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:14 AM on June 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

This looks nice although it comes a little late for me (about 15 years too late). If I ever go back to developing on Windows, though...
posted by cowlick at 9:20 AM on June 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Is this named after Cindy Morgan's character in Tron?
posted by condour75 at 9:32 AM on June 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Halo:Tron::Cortana:Yori
posted by otherchaz at 9:33 AM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Huh, I thought cygwin was the cmd replacement you probably knew you needed.

(I kid, I kid! Tools for a better command line experience are a good thing, however you like to work.)
posted by biogeo at 9:44 AM on June 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

This looks neat although I primarily use Windows as a gaming machine and for Lightroom and do all of my dev work on my MacBook.
posted by octothorpe at 9:52 AM on June 9, 2020

cygwin is kinda 1990s/2000s; the new hotness is WSL 2 -- the Windows Subsystem for Linux, now with an actual no-shit Linux kernel integrated into Windows -- running Debian or Ubuntu or your Linux distro of choice as a guest environment. Native bash support in Windows Terminal! Add a Windows-based X11 server and you can run GNOME on Windows!

It's confusing at first, but the end result (once you wave the dead chicken/type the magic incantations to switch it on) is a UNIX-like environment as tightly integrated into Windows 10 as the BSD userland is on macOS.

(And after years of being a Windows-hater, I now have a Windows subnotebook convertible just to run Linux shit on ... alongside stuff like Scrivener and 1Password and iTunes, which don't run natively on Linux.)
posted by cstross at 10:00 AM on June 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

I love WSL2. One of the best things to ever happen at Microsoft. I run a PC desktop but I don’t know if I’ll ever leave the Apple ecosystem for portables. The trackpads are just too good compared to the garbage on PC.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:03 AM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'll certainly install this the next time I boot into windows. With all the klunkiness of cmd I could live with PowerShell but why could it not be dragged to a reasonable full width? Then when really needing a wider window there is a setting in a fairly unintuitive menu where one could set a spinner to a specific width/height. Oh and don't get me started about cut&paste....
posted by sammyo at 10:32 AM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

The OSX model sounds good in principle until you encounter the reality that is the macports vs. homebrew vs. fink hellscape, and Python installations fighting each other, and Apple breaking command line utilities every six months (not to mention Apple's serious case of 'Not Invented Here' syndrome [looking at you, OpenGL / Vulkan support]).

WSL at least completely partitions off all the Unix-y stuff so that it can do everything the way it wants, rather than treating it as an unruly guest that needs to be shown with passive-aggressive hints and nudges the expected way to do things.
posted by Pyry at 10:39 AM on June 9, 2020 [7 favorites]

[looking at you, OpenGL / Vulkan support]

Except Metal came out a year before Vulkan was even announced and was out 19 months before the first release of Vulkan.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:03 AM on June 9, 2020

Huh, I thought cygwin was the cmd replacement you probably knew you needed.

(I kid, I kid! Tools for a better command line experience are a good thing, however you like to work.)
posted by biogeo at 11:44 AM on June 9 [3 favorites +] [!]

I guess Cygwin does still have a purpose (primarily for X as far as I know - and I guess there are hardcore people who still prefer it) but the hotness these days is WSL/WSL2/Windows Terminal
(which has a console interface that can plug into a variety of shells (sorry, consoles, sorry terminals - I don't know the terms ever).

(The OP link shows the Terminal so I don't have to show/describe it)...

I am just getting back into this and last night got Bash setup using Ubuntu on WSL2 (well I had it setup, but getting more familiar with it and fixing colors etc...) Even opened SSH and was able to access/compile a python hello world in VSCode through the built in terminal on Linux.

I also wouldn't mind trying FISH and Oh-my-zsh, but I've been BASH since the late 90s so hard for me to really want to change.

Someone try to sell me on fish or zsh?

Also I'm curious about trying the Micro text editor and learning more tmux. IDK, this is the first time i've been excited about linux in a while and my roomie goes ...

"You're on your linux shit again" LOLOL.
posted by symbioid at 11:22 AM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

@sammyo, yes, definitely install Terminal! Terminal is SO much better than the old console host, it's all revamped and completely modern from what I've used... I think you'll find it much more useable than the old ways. :)
posted by symbioid at 11:29 AM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

People people you should be using Docker for everything just throw all that other shit out

(Exit, pursued by a bear)
posted by benzenedream at 12:41 PM on June 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

The OSX model sounds good especially if it's iterm + zshell + oh my zsh + pipenv.
posted by signal at 1:12 PM on June 9, 2020

→ Python installations fighting each other
Oh fuck yes. Python shells installing their own full distributions at the head of $PATH, and basically making the rest of your programming stuff just flat out not work. Blecch.

Windows Terminal is quite nice. It has copy and paste, at last. WSL 2 isn't quite available for every user, though.
posted by scruss at 1:45 PM on June 9, 2020

Oh and don't get me started about cut&paste....

Windows Terminal ... has copy and paste, at last.

Are people not aware that Command Prompt has finally joined the 20th* century, and allows you to enable Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V?

*Yes I chose 20th deliberately
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:52 PM on June 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

People people you should be using Docker for everything just throw all that other shit out

Well I do both except when my Docker manifest gets unwieldy or when I need to debug something in a Dockerfile I’ll spin up a WSL instance, it feels faster to use and more native then having a Docker layer between you and a VM. Keep in mind, people are conflating the two a bit but last I checked you don’t need WT to run WSL2, two separate products. May have merged to the point where they’re needs/expected but fundamentally you should be able run WSL2 with your command line of choice.
posted by geoff. at 3:57 PM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Let's not forget msys / mingw! Much more native than cygwin and commonly installed now with git for Windows (powering git bash etc) WSL and WSL2 are great but pretty heavy.
posted by adzm at 4:02 PM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Greg_Ace, Ctrl+C/V does nothing on my Windows 10 CMD prompt. I have to right-click in the menu bar to get the edit menu.
posted by scruss at 5:44 PM on June 9, 2020

This works for me on every Windows 10 computer I've owned in the last 5-ish years:

1. Open a Command Prompt window.
2. Click the little icon in the upper left corner of the window (either left- or right-click are the same for me) and choose 'Properties'.
3. On the General tab, in the Edit Options section, select everything except "Use Ctrl+Shift+C/V as Copy/Paste".
4. Make sure "Use legacy console" is unchecked.
5. Click 'OK'.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:13 PM on June 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Kids these days, back in '90 it was MKS Toolkit if you wanted a decent shell and collection of utilities on those lame Windows machines.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:55 PM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yay!! Another round of My OS Is Red Hot, Your OS Is Diddly-Squat, with an extra helping of Problematic Words!
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:24 PM on June 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

@Pet Rock re. trackpads: get a decent laptop, then.

I have an Alienware 15 inch 2015 (yeah, yeah ... now show me any laptop with a 4k touchscreen and an nvidia 980 in it as well a 4790 i7 which I could buy at the time [trick question, there wasn't one and wouldn't be for a while] ... and the 2015/16 was the last one Dell hadn't gotten it's claws in enough to fuck up). And I have 1st gen SurfaceBook (MS always does hardware really well, from their keyboards to trackballs to at least the SurfaceBook).

Both have amazing trackpads (equal or better than macs) and their functionality surpasses Mac functionality by a mile.

And the keyboards? So good that the 80 key mechanical I bought to use with them docked ... I'm thinking of giving it to my brother, as I have no use for it :/

Back on topic: that is the ONE thing I did prefer on OSX: the terminal window. Daily use/usability and the theming you could do to it. Powershell is ok/usable, but still had so many things wrong with it (and , YES!!! WTF can't I resize it?!?!?!).

For the rest I just laugh at Finder (horrible, inconsistent POS) and snicker at the people who had to buy a keyboard to put on top of their laptop keyboard because the keys fell off :)
posted by MacD at 12:42 PM on June 11, 2020