It's so interesting to me how people consider writing bash scripts to be some sort of absurdist gimmick. I've made some scripts like this for blogging, as well as many other things.

It's often not the best choice. There are situations where, I'd argue, it is. One of the main reasons, in my experience, is for very lightweight servers. I don't want python or node or anything. I want to run a web server with 128mb of ram and a 1gb disk. Somewhat niche, but it's useful to just use the base system.

The other useful thing about it is knowing your shell in general. Even if you're not on the infrastructure team, being comfortable knowing how to navigate a system is both fun and sometimes critical. You never know when you'll need it, and it's an interesting look into your tools.

It's akin to saying "why know how to use a saw when you can use a chainsaw" or "why know how to make a fire when you can use lighter fluid and a lighter?" Sometimes things come up. And it's fun to know how we got to where we are today.

mine is:

find . -name '*.md' -type f -exec sh -c '

  for file do  
    out="docs/${file#./}"  
    out="${out%.md}.html"
    mkdir -p "$(dirname "$out")"  
    pandoc --quiet --template template.html "$file" -o "$out"  
  done

' sh {} +

A single 1200 line bash script to create blogs.

I love bash for quick hacks. I abhor it for things like this.

bash script for blogs is a clever idea but writing in terminal might not be. an alternative angle : script that reads local .md file and deploys it might work well.

Not a bash script, but I built my own small blog generation engine to use with AI agents if anyone is interested https://github.com/trebaud/let-an-agent-build-your-blog

Glorious.

I used a similar system back in the day, nanoblogger:

https://nanoblogger.sourceforge.net/

This is a good example of a program I would like to use if it was distributed in the standard repo of my OS, rather than totally unvetted on the Microsoft Github page of a random developer.

PS: I don't know why HN allows downvoting seeing how it is always so abused. Nothing I wrote here is factually false, and what remains is just my personal opinion as a principled user of FOSS. A bit of tolerance for others' viewpoints is in order.

Mmm, good ol’ bash. I like it.

Oooh..reminds me of something similar I did earlier for own blog a few years back: https://github.com/proxygeek/publish/

I have moved away to Jekyll again but there's always something alluring about single file things - single file webapps, single file LLMs (llamafile) and others

Its time to invent something lightweight and good which runtime is so small that it becomes a system default.

like a microvm with normal language features. Something you can and want to actually attach a debugger onto it. Something independent of architecture too.

I just hate bash :| Even just using bash and curl and checking if its a website or an error page...

Nice idea but I don't understand why people write bash scripts more than a few lines long.

There's absolutely 0 advantage, especially when AI can write simple code like that easily, over using any other language. It makes reading and maintaining much more complex.

Hell, even GitHub's syntax highlighting (and VS Code's) breaks in many places throughout the script. It's just a terrible developer experience, even for your own scripts that nobody else will ever touch.

Some people will say that the advantage is that you don't need to install another runtime, but even this is wrong as the script uses bash, not sh.

I hate Python with a passion, but I'd gladly take it over bash for any of those scripts.

I used to do that. Them move to a NodeJS script.

Because bash is maybe worst than C for this task.

Glorious.

I used a similar system back in the day, nanoblogger:

https://nanoblogger.sourceforge.net/

This is a good example of a program I would like to use if it was distributed in the standard repo of my OS, rather than totally unvetted on the Microsoft Github page of a random developer.

for what we need downvoting and upvoting? I thought: - upvote if you like/agree - downvote if you dont like/disagree Am I wrong?

What? That's how open source works

Mmm, good ol’ bash. I like it.

Awful old Bash. I hate it.

Seriously I don't know why you'd do this in Bash. Crazy choice.

I used to do that. Them move to a NodeJS script.

Because bash is maybe worst than C for this task.

Its time to invent something lightweight and good which runtime is so small that it becomes a system default.

like a microvm with normal language features. Something you can and want to actually attach a debugger onto it. Something independent of architecture too.

I just hate bash :| Even just using bash and curl and checking if its a website or an error page...

I use Python for that, since I know it will always be on my machine.

Is this what you have in mind?

Nim might be an option. It even has a subset to be used for scripting purposes.

Python already fills this role.

exe.dev does a pretty good job of instantly deployable microVMs

Go has a fast enough compile speed I feel like you could syntactically sugar it to be a command line.

for what we need downvoting and upvoting? I thought: - upvote if you like/agree - downvote if you dont like/disagree Am I wrong?

This reads like parody! In a sane world (and I believe the HN community rules are fairly sane) we should be upvoting things that are interesting, or insightful, or informative, or otherwise tickle our curiosity. Not just because we agree with them! After all, who cares that I agree with something? Everyone has an opinion on everything, opinions in themselves are cheap and uninteresting.

What? That's how open source works

Package management in the distro is also how FOSS works?

Awful old Bash. I hate it.

Seriously I don't know why you'd do this in Bash. Crazy choice.

It probably started as a helper script and grew from there. The script seems quite focused and doesn't grow, so a rewrite might not be warranted.

It also has no other dependency, which is also good. I have written helper script to run coding agents in a container. And you guessed it, it's in bash. For the reasons I just wrote down. Should it have to grow I would rewrite it, but not currently.

Some people like to claim that using a pretty esoteric language with lots of weird footguns, lack of basic features and data types, and spawning subprocesses for everything, is somehow keeping it simple.

I do not understand them.

Nim might be an option. It even has a subset to be used for scripting purposes.

Python already fills this role.

exe.dev does a pretty good job of instantly deployable microVMs

It probably started as a helper script and grew from there. The script seems quite focused and doesn't grow, so a rewrite might not be warranted.

I do not understand them.

Known system dependency that's (almost) always on the system you're on.

I remember somebody once telling me that they had learned vi because "it was always installed". Well, no, technically, the only editor you can be sure is there is ed. So, you know, learn that. I was surprised that they actually did.

Bash is syntactically not perfect, I agree. However it's a well known, mature, stable environment. LLMs can write it well if you need them to. If it was perfect, we'd never have had Perl, and as a result we'd never have had Ruby, Python and other scripting languages.

But I like it's a tool that doesn't require me to go reach for a package manager and some build tools I don't always have on every system.

I use Python for that, since I know it will always be on my machine.

Is this what you have in mind?

Yeah but i have Python PTSD from all this Python 2 vs. 3 shit :D

Go has a fast enough compile speed I feel like you could syntactically sugar it to be a command line.

Yeah but its not scripty enough and has not enough easy stuff build in.

It's not interesting or insightful to take potshots at a project because it's hosted on GitHub.

Package management in the distro is also how FOSS works?

Things that end up in curated package repositories like those of the various significant distros, have usually spent time growing on the random developer's own page (most common in the past) or said random developer's account on a forge like github (most common in more modern times).

Standard repos might be were many discover things, but those things don't normally get there until they've build a following, so the random developers page is the more significant vector overall.

Known system dependency that's (almost) always on the system you're on.

But I like it's a tool that doesn't require me to go reach for a package manager and some build tools I don't always have on every system.

Who's updating their blog from a random machine without Python on it, though?

Yeah but i have Python PTSD from all this Python 2 vs. 3 shit :D

That was almost 20 years ago! We migrated 2 to 3 10 years ago. I'd say I moved on. I doubt there will ever be py4 :)

I'm sure that there are still Python 2 codebases there running an unsupported interpreter, but for most people that has been at least 5-10 years ago. Also, the Python project learned a lot from the messy transition, that I think it's unlikely to happen again.

Perl still loves you and will always be there.

Yeah but its not scripty enough and has not enough easy stuff build in.

https://www.tcl-lang.org/

Many people have made micro Tcl’s too if you want something even lighter.

It has a built in subst command no need for a template engine!

It's not interesting or insightful to take potshots at a project because it's hosted on GitHub.

It's downright intolerant to downvote (as opposed to not upvote) a comment which simply advocates values in line with FOSS. I even said I would like to use this program.

Who's updating their blog from a random machine without Python on it, though?

That was almost 20 years ago! We migrated 2 to 3 10 years ago. I'd say I moved on. I doubt there will ever be py4 :)

https://www.tcl-lang.org/

Many people have made micro Tcl’s too if you want something even lighter.

It has a built in subst command no need for a template engine!

It's downright intolerant to downvote (as opposed to not upvote) a comment which simply advocates values in line with FOSS. I even said I would like to use this program.

Perl still loves you and will always be there.

It's so interesting to me how people consider writing bash scripts to be some sort of absurdist gimmick. I've made some scripts like this for blogging, as well as many other things.

Its very niche. This is a static site generator so you could run something a lot heavier and then rsync the output to the server. Even lighter on the server than running bash there.

It is also limited so you might have to add other things. The README suggests using markdown.pl for markdown support.

Bash gets way more hate than it deserves, in ways that are like "this kitchen knife is terrible for cutting down trees!"

Like, yeah, why are you mad? And also, if a dude wants to cut down a tree with a kitchen knife that's actually pretty impressive.

bash script for blogs is a clever idea but writing in terminal might not be. an alternative angle : script that reads local .md file and deploys it might work well.

mine is:

find . -name '*.md' -type f -exec sh -c '

  for file do  
    out="docs/${file#./}"  
    out="${out%.md}.html"
    mkdir -p "$(dirname "$out")"  
    pandoc --quiet --template template.html "$file" -o "$out"  
  done

' sh {} +

Oooh..reminds me of something similar I did earlier for own blog a few years back: https://github.com/proxygeek/publish/

I have moved away to Jekyll again but there's always something alluring about single file things - single file webapps, single file LLMs (llamafile) and others

Not a bash script, but I built my own small blog generation engine to use with AI agents if anyone is interested https://github.com/trebaud/let-an-agent-build-your-blog

Nobody's interested because everyone is one prompt away from exactly the same thing catered to their specific needs.

A single 1200 line bash script to create blogs.

I love bash for quick hacks. I abhor it for things like this.

For what it's worth, I bet this opinion literally doesn't matter anymore.

Write your thing in whatever you want, AI it into another language, done.

Why? If it works and it gives you the features you require that where's the issue? If all 1200 lines of code are utilised and provides you with the blog stack then that's pretty efficient.

How is this any different of someone including multiple python modules to create the same stack for which probably amount to more lines of code if you were to copy and paste in to a single document.

It's like react, a stack with stupid amount of LoC only for the developer to use 1% of and the rest sits unused and bugs the site.

You can source bash scripts so if it's lines of code, break them in to chunks.

Nice idea but I don't understand why people write bash scripts more than a few lines long.

There's absolutely 0 advantage, especially when AI can write simple code like that easily, over using any other language. It makes reading and maintaining much more complex.

Some people will say that the advantage is that you don't need to install another runtime, but even this is wrong as the script uses bash, not sh.

I hate Python with a passion, but I'd gladly take it over bash for any of those scripts.

Bash is the wrong choice for truly complex software but I still find it really hard to pick anything else for the sort of tasks where I'm mostly manipulating text files and shelling out to other tools. My general instinct for when its time to reimplement a script in Python or similar is when I've got a ton of conditionals or function calls, at that point its also time to start writing unit tests.

shellcheck is a huge help in the middle sized shell script space and will regularly shout at me about missing all the random gotchas like not quoting file paths.

> Nice idea but I don't understand why people write bash scripts more than a few lines long.

From a pragmatic perspective I agree. But I think you’re missing the point here. A lot of the most entertaining, and dare I say inspiring content, found on Hacker News is about exactly things like this. Things that seem silly, but are also very intentionally pushing the boundaries to the extreme/absurd.

Its very niche. This is a static site generator so you could run something a lot heavier and then rsync the output to the server. Even lighter on the server than running bash there.

It is also limited so you might have to add other things. The README suggests using markdown.pl for markdown support.

Bash gets way more hate than it deserves, in ways that are like "this kitchen knife is terrible for cutting down trees!"

Like, yeah, why are you mad? And also, if a dude wants to cut down a tree with a kitchen knife that's actually pretty impressive.

For what it's worth, I bet this opinion literally doesn't matter anymore.

Write your thing in whatever you want, AI it into another language, done.

Nobody's interested because everyone is one prompt away from exactly the same thing catered to their specific needs.

Wow that was pretty passive agressive lol, sure you're probably right

Why? If it works and it gives you the features you require that where's the issue? If all 1200 lines of code are utilised and provides you with the blog stack then that's pretty efficient.

How is this any different of someone including multiple python modules to create the same stack for which probably amount to more lines of code if you were to copy and paste in to a single document.

It's like react, a stack with stupid amount of LoC only for the developer to use 1% of and the rest sits unused and bugs the site.

You can source bash scripts so if it's lines of code, break them in to chunks.

Note that I didn't say anything about "If it works and gives you the features you require", you added that.

If you remove that from your reply you're on your way to understanding why I don't like an absolute unit of a bash script.

> If it works

It often doesn't work.

> How is this any different of someone including multiple python modules to create the same stack for which probably amount to more lines of code if you were to copy and paste in to a single document.

There's no problem with 1200 lines of code. The problem is 1200 lines of Bash. The difference is that Bash is incredibly awkward and error prone compared to almost every other language out there.

shellcheck is a huge help in the middle sized shell script space and will regularly shout at me about missing all the random gotchas like not quoting file paths.

> Nice idea but I don't understand why people write bash scripts more than a few lines long.

bashblog

A single Bash script to create blogs.

I created it because I wanted a very, very simple way to post entries to a blog by using a public folder on my server, without any special requirements and dependencies. Works on GNU/Linux, OSX and BSD.

How simple? Just type ./bb.sh post and start writing your blogpost.

You can see a sample here: read the initial blog post. That page was 100% generated using bashblog, no additional tweaking.

Check out other bashblog users

Usage

Download the code and copy bb.sh into a public folder (for example, $HOME/public_html/blog) and run

./bb.sh

This will show the available commands. If the file is not executable, type chmod +x bb.sh and retry.

Before creating your first post, you may want to configure the blog settings (title, author, etc). Read the Configuration section below for more information

To create your first post, just run:

./bb.sh post

It will try to use Markdown, if installed. To force HTML:

./bb.sh post -html

The script will handle the rest.

When you're done, access the public URL for that folder (e.g. http://server.com/~username/blog) and you should see the index file and a new page for that post!

How to...

Please read the wiki to learn how to use the advanced features of Bashblog, such as headers and footers, static pages, and more.

Features

Ultra simple usage: Just type a post with your favorite editor and the script does the rest. No templating.
No installation required. Download bb.sh and start blogging.
Zero dependencies. It runs just on base utils (date, basename, grep, sed, head, etc)
GNU/Linux, BSD and OSX compatible out of the box, no need for GNU coreutils on a Mac. It does some magic to autodetect which command switches it needs to run depending on your system.
All content is static. You only need shell access to a machine with a public web folder. Tip: advanced users could mount a remote public folder via ftpfs and run this script locally
Allows drafts, includes a simple but clean stylesheet, generates the RSS file automatically.
Support for tags/categories
Support for Markdown, Disqus comments, Twitter, Feedburner, Google Analytics.
The project is still maintained as of 2016. Bugs are fixed, and new features are considered (see "Contributing")
Everything stored in a single ~1k lines bash script, how cool is that?! ;)

Configuration

Configuration is not required for a test drive, but if you plan on running your blog with bashblog, you will want to change the default titles, author names, etc, to match your own.

There are two ways to configure the blog strings:

Edit bb.sh and modify the variables in the global_variables() function
Create a .config file with your configuration values -- useful if you don't want to touch the script and be able to update it regularly with git

The software will load the values in the script first, then overwrite them with the values in the .config file. This means that you don't need to define all variables in the config file, only those which you need to override from the defaults.

The format of the .config file is just one variablename="value" per line, just like in the global_variables() function. Please remember: quote the values, do not declare a variable with the dollar sign, do not use spaces around the equal sign.

bashblog uses the $EDITOR environment value to open the text editor.

Detailed features

A simple but nice and readable design, with nothing but the blog posts
NEW on 2.0 Markdown support via a third-party library.
The easiest method is to download Gruber's Markdown.pl
Post preview
Save posts as drafts and resume editing later
HTML page for each post, using its title as the URL
Configurable number of posts on the front page
Automatic generation of an RSS file, feedburner support
Additional page containing an index of all posts
Automatically generates pages for each tag
Rebuild all files while keeping the original data
Comments delegated to Twitter, with additional Disqus support
An option for cookieless Twitter sharing, to comply with the EU cookie law
Google Analytics code support
Contains its own CSS so that everything is reasonably styled by default
Headers, footers, and in general everything that a well-structured html file needs
Support to add extra content on top of every page (e.g. banners, images, etc)
xhtml validation, CSS validation, RSS validation by the w3c
Automatic backup of the site every time you post (stored as .backup.tar.gz)

Read the Changelog section for more updates or check out the news on my blog

Contributing

Bashblog started at 500 SLOC and it now has hit the 1000 SLOC barrier. If we want to keep the code minimal and understandable, we need to make the difficult effort to restrain ourselves from adding too many features.

All bugfixes are welcome, but brand new features need to be strongly justified to get into the main tree. Every new request will be honestly and civilly discussed on the comments. As a guideline, pull requests should:

Fix a use case for some people (e.g. internationalization)
Add a use case which is arguably very common (e.g. disqus integration for comments)
Be very small when possible (a couple lines of code)
Don't require a significant rewrite of the code (Don't break create_html_file() or write_entry(), etc)
It must work on Linux, BSD and Mac. Beware of using GNU coreutils with non-POSIX flags (i.e. date or grep)
Follow the UNIX philosophy: do one thing and do it well, rely on third party software for external features, etc
Always keep backwards compatibility when using the default configuration

Changelog

2.10 Added global_twitter_card_image
2.9 Added body_begin_file_index
2.8 Bugfixes
Slavic language support thanks to Tomasz Jadowski
Removed the now defunct Twitter JSON API share count
Support for static, not managed by bashblog html files
2.7 Store post date on a comment in the html file (#96).
On rebuild, the post date will be synchronised between comment date and file date, with precedence for comment date.
2.6 Support for multiple authors, use a different .config for each one
2.5 Massive code cleanup by Martijn Dekker
'tags' command
The word 'posts' in the tag list (both website and command) now has a singular form, check out template_tags_posts_singular
2.4 Added Twitter summaries metadata for posts (#36)
2.3.3 Removed big comment header.
Added option to display tags for cut articles on index pages (#61)
Cleaned up "all posts" page (#57)
2.3.2 Option to use topsy instead of twitter for references
2.3.1 Cookieless Twitter option
2.3 Intelligent tag rebuilding and Markdown by default
2.2 Flexible post title -> filename conversion
2.1 Support for tags/categories.
'delete' command
2.0.3 Support for other analytics code, via external file
2.0.2 Fixed bug when $body_begin_file was empty.
Added extra line in the footer linking to the github project
2.0.1 Allow personalized header/footer files
2.0 Added Markdown support.
Fully support BSD date
1.6.4 Fixed bug in localized dates
1.6.3 Now supporting BSD date
1.6.2 Simplified some functions and variables to avoid duplicated information
1.6.1 'date' fix when hours are 1 digit.
1.6.0 Disqus comments. External configuration file. Check of 'date' command version.
1.5.1 Misc bugfixes and parameter checks
1.5 Đurađ Radojičić (djura-san) refactored some code and added flexibility and i18n
1.4.2 Now issues are handled at Github
1.4.1 Some code refactoring
1.4 Using twitter for comments, improved 'rebuild' command
1.3 'edit' command
1.2.2 Feedburner support
1.2.1 Fixed the timestamps bug
1.2 'list' command
1.1 Draft and preview support
1.0 Read http://is.gd/Bkdoru

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Note that I didn't say anything about "If it works and gives you the features you require", you added that.

If you remove that from your reply you're on your way to understanding why I don't like an absolute unit of a bash script.

I did yes, got ahead of myself there. I get it.

I'd rather a single unruly page of code to do the whole thing rather than multiple modules that do multiple things half-efficiently that require multiple thought to uncover.

Wow that was pretty passive agressive lol, sure you're probably right

I’d argue that was active aggressive, actually.

> If it works

It often doesn't work.

There's no problem with 1200 lines of code. The problem is 1200 lines of Bash. The difference is that Bash is incredibly awkward and error prone compared to almost every other language out there.

> It often doesn't work.

I suppose my main bash script on BSD, ~400 lines for backup, compilation and other admin tasks including a portable static text/plain web server have never failed me but never tested them interchangeably, so, prone some truth to failure.

I am not disagreeing of course and I would agree, Bash is designed for the system functions and that this is niche. However if it's all you got, eh, go for it.

Systems admin for 15 years and have handled some very hosed systems. Maybe the python binary got hosed and you were really desperate to share your lasagna recipe with your mother and the internet, it does have a purpose. Not ideal, sure.

I did yes, got ahead of myself there. I get it.

I'd rather a single unruly page of code to do the whole thing rather than multiple modules that do multiple things half-efficiently that require multiple thought to uncover.

I’d argue that was active aggressive, actually.

> It often doesn't work.

I am not disagreeing of course and I would agree, Bash is designed for the system functions and that this is niche. However if it's all you got, eh, go for it.

Hacker Times

Hacker Times

Bashblog – a single bash script to create blogs

Discussion

Discussion

bashblog

Usage

How to...

Features

Configuration

Detailed features

Contributing

Changelog

License