php interactive shell without readline

13 years ago by Ferenc Kovacs — view source

unread

Hi,

As most of you know, the current php interactive shell is pretty much
useless without compiling php --with-readline, but for the most users this
the first impression what they experience (eg. using the php interactive
shell without readline support).
There is an alternative readline replacement called linenoise (
https://github.com/antirez/linenoise/) written by the author of Redis, and
I would like to know, what do you think about using that for the
interactive shell if php is built without readline support.
It is really small/compact and it is under the two clause BSD license so I
think it would be a good candidate for bundling it in php.
What do you think about it? Is it something worth looking into?

--
Ferenc Kovács
@Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu

13 years ago by Andrew Faulds — view source

unread

Well, I saw it, and I say for a ~600 line library, why not?

Heck, we could maybe reimplement the readline extension with it.

Hi,

As most of you know, the current php interactive shell is pretty much
useless without compiling php --with-readline, but for the most users this
the first impression what they experience (eg. using the php interactive
shell without readline support).
There is an alternative readline replacement called linenoise (
https://github.com/antirez/linenoise/) written by the author of Redis, and
I would like to know, what do you think about using that for the
interactive shell if php is built without readline support.
It is really small/compact and it is under the two clause BSD license so I
think it would be a good candidate for bundling it in php.
What do you think about it? Is it something worth looking into?

--
Andrew Faulds
http://ajf.me/

13 years ago by Ivan Enderlin @ Hoa — view source

unread

Hello,

This project is interesting but it is also possible to do it only with PHP.
As a proof of concept, I would like to share some links with you. First
one:
http://hg.hoa-project.net/Central/file/tip/Library/Console/Readline/Readline.php,
which is highly hackable: we can add mappings (esc, ctrl, abc…), history
(when pressing key up and key down) and it works as an infinite
automaton based on the STATE_* constants. And thanks to PHP and its
static:: keyword, we can overload states, e.g.:
http://hg.hoa-project.net/Central/file/tip/Library/Console/Readline/Password.php.
Hop, password is hidden :-).
This library has some limitations: it does not support multibytes
(Unicode) and has an unlimited history (which can cause memory errors),
but it is a (advanced-)POC. It works on Unix-based system, actually
STTY-based shells, and has a pretty simple fallback for DOS. It does not
require PHP to be compiled --with-readline, it uses stty options
instead. And finally, it uses around 850 lines of codes (with comments +
licences).

Best regards :-).

Well, I saw it, and I say for a ~600 line library, why not?

Heck, we could maybe reimplement the readline extension with it.

Hi,

As most of you know, the current php interactive shell is pretty much
useless without compiling php --with-readline, but for the most users
this
the first impression what they experience (eg. using the php interactive
shell without readline support).
There is an alternative readline replacement called linenoise (
https://github.com/antirez/linenoise/) written by the author of
Redis, and
I would like to know, what do you think about using that for the
interactive shell if php is built without readline support.
It is really small/compact and it is under the two clause BSD license
so I
think it would be a good candidate for bundling it in php.
What do you think about it? Is it something worth looking into?

--
Ivan Enderlin
Developer of Hoa
http://hoa.42/ or http://hoa-project.net/

PhD. student at DISC/Femto-ST (Vesontio) and INRIA (Cassis)
http://disc.univ-fcomte.fr/ and http://www.inria.fr/

Member of HTML and WebApps Working Group of W3C
http://w3.org/

13 years ago by johannes@schlueters.de — view source

unread

Hi,

As most of you know, the current php interactive shell is pretty much
useless without compiling php --with-readline, but for the most users this
the first impression what they experience (eg. using the php interactive
shell without readline support).

Note that for 5.4 I refactored the code so a shared readline extension
is good enough by moving all shell related parts to ext/readline. This
should reduce the pain for distribution package users where typically
everything is shared.

There is an alternative readline replacement called linenoise (
https://github.com/antirez/linenoise/) written by the author of Redis, and
I would like to know, what do you think about using that for the
interactive shell if php is built without readline support.
It is really small/compact and it is under the two clause BSD license so I
think it would be a good candidate for bundling it in php.
What do you think about it? Is it something worth looking into?

There are two ways to do that: Either move the shell code back to
sapi/cli or making ext/readline play nice with linenoise.

When using the first approach make sure that the user can still pick
readline, as readline has features linenoise (currently) hasn't, like
searching using Ctrl+r or configuration of the key combinations. I'd
also like if readline can be built shared but still overwrite the
built-in default.

Doing the second approach has the benefit that the lib can be exported
to userland in the same run. While then there's little benefit as it all
still depends on an extension ...

(Actually there would be a third possibility - writing a linenoise
extension which uses sapi/cli's hook but that requires duplicating most
of the shell code and makes things more complicated, let#s ignore
this ;-) )

What's your plan there?

johannes

13 years ago by Ferenc Kovacs — view source

unread

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 12:18 AM, Johannes Schlüter
johannes@schlueters.dewrote:

Hi,

As most of you know, the current php interactive shell is pretty much
useless without compiling php --with-readline, but for the most users
this
the first impression what they experience (eg. using the php interactive
shell without readline support).

Note that for 5.4 I refactored the code so a shared readline extension
is good enough by moving all shell related parts to ext/readline. This
should reduce the pain for distribution package users where typically
everything is shared.

for the record that would be https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53878 and
http://git.php.net/?p=php-src.git;a=commit;h=6c734a6b4c9ecf90162cf53fcf5f89864ccabbde
right?

There is an alternative readline replacement called linenoise (
https://github.com/antirez/linenoise/) written by the author of Redis,
and
I would like to know, what do you think about using that for the
interactive shell if php is built without readline support.
It is really small/compact and it is under the two clause BSD license so
I
think it would be a good candidate for bundling it in php.
What do you think about it? Is it something worth looking into?

There are two ways to do that: Either move the shell code back to
sapi/cli or making ext/readline play nice with linenoise.

I have to grasp the code a little bit better to answer that, but from a
quick look I think that it was an improvement, that the readline stuff was
moved out from there, so I think that we should keep that.
The linenoise would be always available and I think it would be only a
couple of lines, so I think that it would be possible to put it into
php_cli.c but as you mentioned we should make it such a way, that even the
dynamically loaded readline has to be able to override it.

When using the first approach make sure that the user can still pick
readline, as readline has features linenoise (currently) hasn't, like
searching using Ctrl+r or configuration of the key combinations.

agree, linenoise can't replace readline, so in general I think that we
should only use it, if readline isn't available.

I'd
also like if readline can be built shared but still overwrite the
built-in default.

agree

Doing the second approach has the benefit that the lib can be exported
to userland in the same run. While then there's little benefit as it all
still depends on an extension ...

(Actually there would be a third possibility - writing a linenoise
extension which uses sapi/cli's hook but that requires duplicating most
of the shell code and makes things more complicated, let#s ignore
this ;-) )

What's your plan there?

to tell you the truth I'm just throwing around ideas and waiting for
somebody with better understanding the actual implementation to help me
out. ;)

--
Ferenc Kovács
@Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu

13 years ago by Andrew Faulds — view source

unread

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 12:18 AM, Johannes Schlüter
johannes@schlueters.dewrote:

Hi,

As most of you know, the current php interactive shell is pretty much
useless without compiling php --with-readline, but for the most users
this
the first impression what they experience (eg. using the php interactive
shell without readline support).
Note that for 5.4 I refactored the code so a shared readline extension
is good enough by moving all shell related parts to ext/readline. This
should reduce the pain for distribution package users where typically
everything is shared.

for the record that would be https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53878 and
http://git.php.net/?p=php-src.git;a=commit;h=6c734a6b4c9ecf90162cf53fcf5f89864ccabbde
right?

There is an alternative readline replacement called linenoise (
https://github.com/antirez/linenoise/) written by the author of Redis,
and
I would like to know, what do you think about using that for the
interactive shell if php is built without readline support.
It is really small/compact and it is under the two clause BSD license so
I
think it would be a good candidate for bundling it in php.
What do you think about it? Is it something worth looking into?
There are two ways to do that: Either move the shell code back to
sapi/cli or making ext/readline play nice with linenoise.

I have to grasp the code a little bit better to answer that, but from a
quick look I think that it was an improvement, that the readline stuff was
moved out from there, so I think that we should keep that.
The linenoise would be always available and I think it would be only a
couple of lines, so I think that it would be possible to put it into
php_cli.c but as you mentioned we should make it such a way, that even the
dynamically loaded readline has to be able to override it.

When using the first approach make sure that the user can still pick
readline, as readline has features linenoise (currently) hasn't, like
searching using Ctrl+r or configuration of the key combinations.

agree, linenoise can't replace readline, so in general I think that we
should only use it, if readline isn't available.

I'd
also like if readline can be built shared but still overwrite the
built-in default.

agree

Doing the second approach has the benefit that the lib can be exported
to userland in the same run. While then there's little benefit as it all
still depends on an extension ...

(Actually there would be a third possibility - writing a linenoise
extension which uses sapi/cli's hook but that requires duplicating most
of the shell code and makes things more complicated, let#s ignore
this ;-) )

What's your plan there?

to tell you the truth I'm just throwing around ideas and waiting for
somebody with better understanding the actual implementation to help me
out. ;)

Well if linenoise() isn't that different, you could use #ifdefs to make
it use the correct lib at compile-time, no?

--
Andrew Faulds
http://ajf.me/

13 years ago by Ferenc Kovacs — view source

unread

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 12:18 AM, Johannes Schlüter
johannes@schlueters.dewrote:

Hi,

As most of you know, the current php interactive shell is pretty much
useless without compiling php --with-readline, but for the most users

this

the first impression what they experience (eg. using the php interactive
shell without readline support).

Note that for 5.4 I refactored the code so a shared readline extension
is good enough by moving all shell related parts to ext/readline. This
should reduce the pain for distribution package users where typically
everything is shared.

for the record that would be https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53878https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53878and
http://git.php.net/?p=php-src.git;a=commit;h=
6c734a6b4c9ecf90162cf53fcf5f89864ccabbdehttp://git.php.net/?p=php-src.git;a=commit;h=6c734a6b4c9ecf90162cf53fcf5f89864ccabbde
right?

There is an alternative readline replacement called linenoise (

https://github.com/antirez/**linenoise/https://github.com/antirez/linenoise/)
written by the author of Redis,

and

I would like to know, what do you think about using that for the
interactive shell if php is built without readline support.
It is really small/compact and it is under the two clause BSD license so

I

think it would be a good candidate for bundling it in php.
What do you think about it? Is it something worth looking into?

There are two ways to do that: Either move the shell code back to
sapi/cli or making ext/readline play nice with linenoise.

I have to grasp the code a little bit better to answer that, but from a
quick look I think that it was an improvement, that the readline stuff was
moved out from there, so I think that we should keep that.
The linenoise would be always available and I think it would be only a
couple of lines, so I think that it would be possible to put it into
php_cli.c but as you mentioned we should make it such a way, that even the
dynamically loaded readline has to be able to override it.

When using the first approach make sure that the user can still pick

readline, as readline has features linenoise (currently) hasn't, like
searching using Ctrl+r or configuration of the key combinations.

agree, linenoise can't replace readline, so in general I think that we
should only use it, if readline isn't available.

I'd

also like if readline can be built shared but still overwrite the
built-in default.

agree

Doing the second approach has the benefit that the lib can be exported

to userland in the same run. While then there's little benefit as it all
still depends on an extension ...

(Actually there would be a third possibility - writing a linenoise
extension which uses sapi/cli's hook but that requires duplicating most
of the shell code and makes things more complicated, let#s ignore
this ;-) )

What's your plan there?

to tell you the truth I'm just throwing around ideas and waiting for
somebody with better understanding the actual implementation to help me
out. ;)

Well if linenoise() isn't that different, you could use #ifdefs to make
it use the correct lib at compile-time, no?

you mean putting the #ifdefs in ext/readline/readline_cli.c ?
yeah that would be easy, but that would be both hackish and doesn't solve
anything, as that ext won't be loaded if readline isn't present.
this is why Johannes said, that we have to either move some code back to
sapi/cli/php_cli.c or integrate linenoise in such a way, that dynamically
loaded extensions could still replace/override it(else we would lose
Johannes work in 5.4 which made it possible to dynamically load readline).
Johannes, please correct me if I'm factually wrong here.

--
Ferenc Kovács
@Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu

13 years ago by Andrew Faulds — view source

unread

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 1:22 AM, Andrew Faulds <ajf@ajf.me
mailto:ajf@ajf.me> wrote:

    On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 12:18 AM, Johannes Schlüter
    <johannes@schlueters.de <mailto:johannes@schlueters.de>>wrote:

        

            Hi,

            As most of you know, the current php interactive shell
            is pretty much
            useless without compiling php --with-readline, but for
            the most users

        this

            the first impression what they experience (eg. using
            the php interactive
            shell without readline support).

        Note that for 5.4 I refactored the code so a shared
        readline extension
        is good enough by moving all shell related parts to
        ext/readline. This
        should reduce the pain for distribution package users
        where typically
        everything is shared.

    for the record that would be
    https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53878 and
    http://git.php.net/?p=php-src.git;a=commit;h=6c734a6b4c9ecf90162cf53fcf5f89864ccabbde
      right?

            There is an alternative readline replacement called
            linenoise (
            https://github.com/antirez/linenoise/) written by the
            author of Redis,

        and

            I would like to know, what do you think about using
            that for the
            interactive shell if php is built without readline
            support.
            It is really small/compact and it is under the two
            clause BSD license so

        I

            think it would be a good candidate for bundling it in php.
            What do you think about it? Is it something worth
            looking into?

        There are two ways to do that: Either move the shell code
        back to
        sapi/cli or making ext/readline play nice with linenoise.

    I have to grasp the code a little bit better to answer that,
    but from a
    quick look I think that it was an improvement, that the
    readline stuff was
    moved out from there, so I think that we should keep that.
    The linenoise would be always available and I think it would
    be only a
    couple of lines, so I think that it would be possible to put
    it into
    php_cli.c but as you mentioned we should make it such a way,
    that even the
    dynamically loaded readline has to be able to override it.


        When using the first approach make sure that the user can
        still pick
        readline, as readline has features linenoise (currently)
        hasn't, like
        searching using Ctrl+r or configuration of the key
        combinations.


    agree, linenoise can't replace readline, so in general I think
    that we
    should only use it, if readline isn't available.


        I'd
        also like if readline can be built shared but still
        overwrite the
        built-in default.

    agree


        Doing the second approach has the benefit that the lib can
        be exported
        to userland in the same run. While then there's little
        benefit as it all
        still depends on an extension ...

        (Actually there would be a third possibility - writing a
        linenoise
        extension which uses sapi/cli's hook but that requires
        duplicating most
        of the shell code and makes things more complicated, let#s
        ignore
        this ;-) )

        What's your plan there?


    to tell you the truth I'm just throwing around ideas and
    waiting for
    somebody with better understanding the actual implementation
    to help me
    out. ;)

Well if linenoise() isn't that different, you could use #ifdefs to
make it use the correct lib at compile-time, no?

you mean putting the #ifdefs in ext/readline/readline_cli.c ?
No, I mean moving code bact to sapi/cli/php_cli.c and using either
readline or linenoise there as appropriate.
yeah that would be easy, but that would be both hackish and doesn't
solve anything, as that ext won't be loaded if readline isn't present.
this is why Johannes said, that we have to either move some code back
to sapi/cli/php_cli.c or integrate linenoise in such a way, that
dynamically loaded extensions could still replace/override it(else we
would lose Johannes work in 5.4 which made it possible to dynamically
load readline).
Johannes, please correct me if I'm factually wrong here.

--
Ferenc Kovács
@Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu

--
Andrew Faulds
http://ajf.me/

13 years ago by johannes@schlueters.de — view source

unread

to tell you the truth I'm just throwing around ideas and waiting for
somebody with better understanding the actual implementation to help me
out. ;)

I wonder which is the actual problem to solve? ;-)

Probably a better solution is to simply drop the -a mode without
readline and show a nice error message instead. Unix/Linux users should
have either libedit or readline around. For Windows this is still might
not be a complete solutions, last time I tried I failed with providing
inofficial readline builds (don't remember the problem) but maybe the
win folks can provide libedit based builds (we can't provide readline
based builds due to licensing)

Well if linenoise() isn't that different, you could use #ifdefs to make
it use the correct lib at compile-time, no?

That won't solve the issue that the extension might not be there (unless
you undo the refactoring in 5.4 which means there's no way to override
using readline anymore, as mentioned in my previous mail)

johannes