Support other shells like powershell / nushell / ksh / xonsh / elvish / tcsh

[mandel-macaque]

Discord username (optional)

mandel

Describe the bug

One of the uses cases is to allow developers that are not happy with zsh to change to a different shell. This can be rolling back to bash w(hich was the original default Mac OS X terminal) or other shells such as pwsh. 

Pwsh is a common scenario for two type of developers:

1. Windows developers that need to work on OS X.
2. Dotnet developers that are used to pwsh due to windows.

Another use case is to switch back to bash because there are some small differences between zsh and bash and in some cases, moving to zsh from bash makes certain scripts fail. As an example, we in xamarin-macios always ensure that Make does call bash and not zsh.

To Reproduce

1. Install pwsh on the Mac using https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell-on-macos?view=powershell-7.2
2. Ensure that pwsh is in your /etc/shells
3. Change the default shell via chsh -s /usr/local/bin/pwsh
4. Open a new Warp windows. It should load with pwsh, it does not, instead it uses zsh.

Expected behaviour

When setting the default shell of my user to a diff shell app present in /etc/shells my configuration should be respected.

Screenshots

No response

Operating System

MacOS

OS Version

12.2.1

Additional context

No response

[pkutaj]

+1, I use powershell core for basic interaction with both win/mac; looking forward to warp.dev with posh support, else staying with oh-my-posh and iterm / windows terminal (both great, btw).

Also I suggest putting PowerShell in the name of the issue for SEO purposes, took some effort to find this issue.

[sgiddings-kunzleigh]

I also use PowerShell quite heavily on macOS as a DevOps Engineer working in Azure all day. I would love for some native PowerShell 7 support in Warp. I also use oh-my-posh for a custom prompt and Warp doesn't seem to like ti very much 😬

[elviskahoro]

Gonna keep this open here actually.

[bmitc]

I found this issue by searching for it, as I too would like to use PowerShell with Warp.

There may be other issues, but the first one I noticed was the differences in how the shell prompts are handled.

For zsh:

For pwsh:

This also means that the command "blocks" (not sure exactly what Warp calls them) do not work. The entire shell history is treated as a single block:

[sgiddings-kunzleigh]

I found this issue by searching for it, as I too would like to use PowerShell with Warp.

There may be other issues, but the first one I noticed was the differences in how the shell prompts are handled.

For zsh:

For pwsh:

This also means that the command "blocks" (not sure exactly what Warp calls them) do not work. The entire shell history is treated as a single block:

Yeah that is because Warp doesn't natively understand other shells, so when you spin up PowerShell or Nushell it considers that a single command. And the entire block is the "one" command of running that other shell, until you exit and return to zsh or some other shell at Warp understands.

[warpdotdev-devx]

Shuan's correct, we have to make a custom parser for each shell to enable Blocks, etc. Check out here GitHub discussion on creating a generic shell API: #641

[bbusschots-mu]

In the light theme many PowerShell prompts are all but invisible. Overall running pwsh in a Warp terminal is a recipe for crankiness!

[gisantiago]

+1, I use powershell to manage MS 365 and Azure functions. As a Mac user, please add powershell to warp for mac.

[dannyneira]

Adding XONsh to the list

[Xjs]

I use Elvish (https://elv.sh) and it would be really cool if it would be possible to write integrations for it.

[thomrad]

As a heavy powershell user, I am very looking forward to use it with warp!

[f1rstC0de]

+1 for NuShell support!
Adding this to support list please

[dannyneira]

added tcsh to the list based on user feedback

[Manbearpiet]

pwsh would be lovely indeed!

[standard-librarian]

can't wait for nushell. guys, i love warp ❤️.

[AucaCoyan]

I'd love nushell support too! ❤️

[susl]

I love Warp, but the absence of nushell support is critical.

[raaaaaymond]

I have to use Mac for work, just found Warp and it is so nice! It's perfect, but I was soooo so disappointed to find out it doesn't support Powershell. Please add Powershell! And Xonsh and whatever (thank you @dannyneira , I had never heard of Xonsh).

[texastoland]

I'd personally love Nu but see an enterprise case for PS too:

Shell	⭐	🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
PowerShell	42K	🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩8️⃣🟢
Nushell	28K	🟩🟩🟩🟩5️⃣🟢
Xonsh	7400	1️⃣🟢
Elvish	5200	1️⃣
tcsh	200	1
KornShell	150	1

Footnotes

1. Not indicative of legacy usage ↩ ↩²

[dannyneira]

@texastoland "We also intend to build support for Powershell as part of building Warp on Windows." source. The plan is to build Windows version along with pwsh support after a Linux version. No firm ETA on this but we're aiming for Linux in 2024.

[texastoland]

we do plan on building Warp for Windows once we've wrapped up building Linux (no concrete timeline just yet). We also intend to build support for PowerShell as part of building Warp on Windows.

Great news and makes sense! It also sounds like Nu isn't a possibility in the near future 🥲

[dannyneira]

Not 100% sure about any eta, but Nushell does look very powerful and is one of Warps dependencies.

[texastoland]

Wiiild thanks so much for sharing 🙌🏼

[UserSv4]

Nushell for Warp: https://github.com/UserSv4/nushell-warp

[damianpowell]

+1 for PowerShell (pwsh)

For me this would be great because I use pwsh as my main shell on Linux, Mac AND Windows. I'm a .NET developer so its really useful to have a modern, object-oriented shell that natively understands .NET. That experience would be even better if I could use an equally modern terminal.

[texastoland]

@dannyneira I wonder if there could be an intermediate solution in the near term. I'd love to continue using Warp with Nu (or whatever) whether Warpified or not. ATM I switch to other emulators like Tabby or the built-in terminal. The most notable barriers are:

1. The entire subshell session is clickable (or arrowable) sometimes impeding interaction
2. I can't open a new tab with a non-default shell

I suspect there are other issues requesting these but couldn't find them for linking. If they were improved Warp would be 1 of the best options even when using unsupported shells 💫

[dannyneira]

True maybe we can run other shell sessions like nu or pwsh in "alt-screen" mode so that the text is more easily selectable, and new tabs can be opened, etc.

[Shoehorner]

I would love PowerShell support. I am an IT pro in the Azure and Microsoft 365 space, and I would love to Warp but I pretty much have to use PowerShell 7.x exclusively. So, I stick with iTerm.

[Explosion-Scratch]

hell 7.x exclusively. So, I stick with iTerm.

I've since switched to iTerm, it has so many settings and features that make it really powerful.

[itpropro]

I would love to be able to use PowerShell (pwsh) in Warp privately as well as for teams. It's our default shell on MacOS and Windows as well, can't wait for it to land.

[theramzay]

Hello everyone, I’m .Net Developer (azure functions/asp.net/sharepoint) (yes, on mac) and we have so much scripts and helpers in PowerShell 7.x.x. So yep, support for pwsh will be very appreciated!

[dawdmaow]

+1 for nushell

[atl-ggregson]

I'd love to see good support for pwsh, being an object shell there would be plenty of opportunities to light up nice capabilities in Warp.

[Tom-Boscher]

Any ETA about Nushell support?

[acarl005]

Hey all! We're experimenting with Warp on Windows. As part of the effort, we're looking into Powershell. Here's a demo of a Powershell session running on my Mac:

This is only experimental at the moment, as there's still a lot to do to make sure it works with Warp's other features.

[atl-ggregson]

@acarl005 Nice to see PowerShell support getting started! Thank you for sharing!

One of the major differences with PowerShell is that it's object based, so those files that are listed by Get-ChildItem are all objects. Something that would be awesome in Warp would be for it to be aware of this, being able to hover over or click on a line and get a preview of the object to see all the properties would be great. I could also imagine being able to view the pipeline output that was used to render the block.

Just some quick hints, you don't need to use Write-Output to write output to the pipeline, because that's the default behaviour; just $env:SHELL will do the job.

When using the shell interactively I'd normally use the short-forms for commands like Set-Location and Get-ChildItem, i.e. sl and gci. In scripts the long forms are preferred for clarity. You can also type a command's initials and press [tab] to complete the long form (e.g. i-rm[tab] to complete Invoke-RestMethod).

I know someone's going to point out that you can use cd, dir etc. aliases but I always suggest people use the PowerShell forms (sl, gci, etc.) because it reinforces the fact that these are quite different commands.

[acarl005]

Thanks for the tips, @atl-ggregson. Nice to get help from the community :)
Introspecting objects is a really cool idea. We might be able to get additional information on the pipeline output by overriding Out-Default to serialize the object metadata, parse it in Warp, and show a rich UI with that additional metadata. I'm curious if there are better ways to get this kind of information 🤔

[jokeyrhyme]

Yep, nushell draws inspiration from PS, too, so it's built-ins also output rich data/tables

If anything, I'd expect Warp to do less work internally when dealing with PS and nushell, because there's no need to parse raw shell stdout for meaning

[atl-ggregson]

I'm not sure how relevant it might be, but there are tools such as Out-ConsoleGridView and Out-ObjectTree that let you view and interact with objects on the pipeline, see https://github.com/PowerShell/ConsoleGuiTools.

There's also an Out-HtmlView cmdlet which is part of this module: https://github.com/EvotecIT/PSWriteHTML.

There's also a (very old) tool that was part of Windows PowerShell called Out-GridView (the ConsoleGuiTools' Out-ConsoleGridView was inspired by it), but the port to PowerShell Core was abandoned years ago and hasn't been picked up.

[glcraft]

Nushell has built-ins commands to format the output with the to command

[itpropro]

Hey all! We're experimenting with Warp on Windows. As part of the effort, we're looking into Powershell. Here's a demo of a Powershell session running on my Mac:

This is only experimental at the moment, as there's still a lot to do to make sure it works with Warp's other features.

This looks fantastic! If you are looking for someone who uses PowerShell on Windows and MacOS as primary shell and has a PowerShell profile customized over years and develops PS projects on both OS', I am happy to provide feedback :)