Tips and Naming

• The latest release is at: https://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/
• Please call the package oils-for-unix
  • There is no more "oil". The project is called Oils, or "Oils for Unix"
  • Reasons for the Big Renaming to Oils, OSH, and YSH (March 2023)
• Invoking ./install _bin/cxx-opt-sh/oils-for-unix at the root of source tree will install the executable oils-for-unix.
• It will also install symlinks osh and ysh to that executable, in the style of busybox.
  • osh is very compatible with POSIX sh and bash, while ysh flips some switches to make it a coherent new language.
• Description: Oils is a Unix shell with JSON-compatible structured data. It's our upgrade path from bash to a better language and runtime.
• Longer Description:
  • bin/osh runs POSIX shell scripts and many bash scripts. bin/ysh is an improved shell language.

Help on the Build System

See https://oils.pub/release/latest/doc/help-mirror.html

2025-04 - Version 0.29.0 Update: The oil-$VERSION tarball was renamed oils-ref-$VERSION

The recommended tarball is oils-for-unix-$VERSION, not oil-$VERSION

Some people were using the old oil tarball, which is obsolete (as of 2024)

oils-ref should not be packaged. It is for people who want to verify that Oils has an "executable spec" that runs under CPython. It is not meant to be used.

Related

• Oils Deployments
• Oils Packaging Tips - Add tips here!