axl

axl is a small experimental shell being rebuilt in Rust. This is an early first iteration focused on creating a simple base for command parsing, execution, and automated tests rather than matching every feature of the previous C++ version.

Current features

• Interactive prompt showing the current directory
• External command execution with arguments
• Built-in cd command
• Single- and double-quoted arguments
• Clean exit when stdin reaches EOF
• Lexer, parser, and cd test coverage

Requirements

• A recent stable Rust toolchain
• Cargo

Install Rust through rustup if it is not already available.

Build

cargo build

The debug binary is created at target/debug/axl.

Run

cargo run

Press Ctrl-D on an empty prompt to exit.

Test

cargo test --all-targets

Optional formatting and lint checks:

cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings

Install locally

cargo install --path .

This installs the axl binary into Cargo's binary directory, normally ~/.cargo/bin.

Current limitations

The Rust version does not yet implement pipeline execution, redirection, command history, startup configuration, environment expansion, job control, or the full set of built-ins. Pipe tokens are recognised by the lexer, but are not executed yet.

Development of the first usable Rust version is tracked in milestone 1.