Nushell core team meeting 2024-12-04

Attendees

• Ian
• Piepmatz
• Stefan
• Michael
• Douglas
• Jack
• Rose
• Andy
• Devyn
• Maxim
• Wind

Agenda

Remaining items from last weeks meeting:

• Moving HTTP commands to a plugin (#14432)
  • Stefan comment pre-meeting: given the valid concerns about security and quality of our curl-we-have-at-home, has our stance here impact on enhancement PRs to the http family e.g. #14340 websockets/streaming or the already merged multipart forms that caused semver breakage due to upstream changes, I am pro minimal http as part of the default to bootstrap a nupm or further plugins from the single installed binary/package.

New Items

• Deprecating $env.NU_XXX_DIRS and env.nu (see notes below)
• per Windows drive Working directory - What is compatibility what is familiarity
• Status of std-rfc?

Discussed Topics

Deprecating $env.NU_XXX_DIRS and env.nu (see notes below)

Proposed steps. Release one:

1. Print a deprecation warning if the user sets any value to $env.NU_XXX_DIRS (but keep it working)
2. Change default config etc. to use the const version and do not generate env.nu automatically anymore.
3. Print a deprecation warning if the user has env.nu (but still read it)

Then, next release:

1. Remove $env.NU_XXX_DIRS functionality, but still print a warning if the user sets a value to it
2. Do not read env.nu anymore, but still print a warning if it exists

Then, next release:

1. Remove deprecation warnings

Alternatively, keep as escape-hatch:

1. Rename env.nu to preconfig.nu
2. Don't automatically generate preconfig.nu for new users
   Need ENV_CONVERSIONS to update state immediately or change to const

http should it be a plugin?

• http:
  • security concern, having the process launching bits with the web interacting part. (counter: every process could exec/fork, PS does it as well)
  • general security concerns regarding our implementation (is it our when we pull in dependencies, trust, quality of dependency)
  • scope creep, can't rollback/version behavior in Nushell main as easily as with a plugin
  • basic http get is a killer feature with wow factor of Nushell
• plugin side
  • under developed for the default distribution of plugins
  • currently some packages ship plugins some not (e.g. winget has some)
• General vibe:
  • we for now want the http get
  • watch out for scope creep in main impl -> develop a plugin for new stuff first
• Suggestion to Ian to use his PR as a basis for an http plugin that can be further developed over time along with yet another awesome example of how to write a more "sophisticated" type of plugin.
  • can also be used for future development of features we want in http that would not be part of the core http command set

std rfc folder -> staging round for std

• in nu_scripts std-lib-candidates
• now