Bass makes it easy to use utilities written for Bash in fish shell.
Regular bash scripts can be used in fish shell just as scripts written in any
language with proper shebang or explicitly using the interpreter (i.e. using
bash script.sh). However, many utilities, such as virtualenv, modifies the
shell environment and requires to be sourced, and therefore cannot be used
in fish. Sometimes, counterparts (such as the excellent
virtualfish) are
created, but that's often not the case.
Bass is created to make it possible to use bash uilities in fish shell without any modification. It works by capturing what environment variables are modified by the utility of interest, and replay the changes in fish.
Use the Makefile.
make install will copy two files to ~/.config/fish/functions/.
make uninstall will remove those two files.
Relaunch the shell for the change to take effect.
Bass is simple to use. Just prefix your bash utility command with bass:
> bass export X=3
> echo $X
3
Notice that export X=3 is bash syntax. Bass "transported" the new bash
environment variable back to fish.
Bass has a debug option so you can see what happened:
> bass -d export X=4
# updating X=3 -> 4
set -g -x X 4
Here is a more realistic example, using the excellent nvm:
> bass source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh ';' nvm use iojs
Now using io.js v1.1.0
Note that semicolon is quoted to avoid being consumed by fish.
This example takes advantage of the nvm bash utility to switch to iojs. After the command, iojs is accessible:
> which iojs
/Users/edc/.nvm/versions/io.js/v1.1.0/bin/iojs
You can then very easily pack the command as a function and feel more at home:
> funced mynvm
mynvm> function mynvm
bass source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh ';' nvm $argv
end
> mynvm list
-> iojs-v1.1.0
system
> mynvm ls-remote
v0.1.14
v0.1.15
...
At the moment, Bass does not work with interactive utilities. This is not hard to fix, but I cannot think of a use case. File a ticket if this is something you find missing.