This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. #Tcl would be a really good #NixOS builder language.

Incredibly portable
Easily bootstrappable
Like bash but without many of its pitfalls
Like lisp but with an arguably cleaner and more familiar syntax

There are also disadvantages, but you can probably count on one hand programming languages that are suited for the task.

@wamserma

RE: https://cdrom.tokyo/objects/6c88a7dc-52bd-4481-879d-78e34dc58b14

@fgaz @wamserma Isn't it LUA in 2020s?..

@dpwiz @wamserma lua is great, but imagine writing shell-like code in lua…

os.execute(...) os.execute(...) os.execute(...)

Sure, some stuff could be abstracted or implemented in lua itself (install(), substituteInPlace()`…), but I feel like this kind of glue code will always be external calls for the most part

@fgaz @wamserma Is there an example (if fantasy) of such a build script in Tcl?