There are many userland binaries that require far more system calls than bash. Take any general purpose programming language, like Python, Ruby or JavaScript on node as a simple example. Their libraries expose a lot of functionality that would finally translate into syscalls.

So no. I disagree that bash was a major final milestone.

Here is an interesting link for you:

https://thenewstack.io/future-wsl-distro-independent-flexibl....

In particular, check out this tidbit: “Until you run Bash, no Linux process can run on your machine. As soon as you open Bash, you can choose to start any background services you want to have run. If you want to have MySQL or FSH or ssh or Postgres or Apache or whatever run, you can start them manually or autostart then with the .bashrc file,” Turner pointed out. “But as soon as you close the Bash console, we tear down any running Linux processes. So if you close the console window, you can no longer access your system via ssh, from your machine or any other.”

Whats interesting about this, is bash really plays a significant role in anchoring the entire windows subsystem for linux - more so than what you would normally expect out of merely a shell - to some degree, it is your user environment.

I'm curious as to whether you realize that you've now taken so strong a position on this issue that you've blinded yourself to the evidence? I just gave you some information that showed that, the center of activity for Creators Edition is Bash. Bash is the only way that you can launch your linux subsystem on windows. Lots of work has been done on this Bash environment. It's entirely reasonable for Microsoft to say, "What's new in Bash/WSL and Windows Console" - as that's where they've done all the work. Bash is not just a Unix Shell in Microsoft's particular implementation - unlike every instance of Unix I've ever used (Starting with SunOs in 1993, but including zillions of iterations of Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc...) - your shell on WSL is not just an entry into /etc/passwd, but instead is your operating environment - that, when it goes away, takes the entire process tree with it.

I kind of get what you are saying, that you are irked that Microsoft is trying to take some ownership of Bash, when it's really a GNU property - but, honestly, this is more like a temporary fork. Right now, for Anniversary Edition and Creators Edition - Bash is the center of gravity (along with the console environment - tons of awesome stuff there). And I agree with you, that this feels like a temporary hook, and that in the future, WSL will be able to run without Bash - and that will be a good (great!) thing - crontab! And then, Bash will hopefully just return to being what it was before - just a shell. (Perhaps with a few extra WSL hooks than vanilla GNU Bash - but we've already agreed that each implementation of Bash will have those hooks, so nothing new there.)

How about we both agree that Bash is a shell. Developed and Maintained by GNU. That is required by WSL right now to launch the linux subsystem, and therefore work by Microsoft on their Bash environment is important to WSL.

Fair enough?

Okay - you make some good points, and I'm coming around to seeing things your way. Note that the bash (the shell) that you are running inside WSL appears to be binary identical to a stock ubuntu distro - so from that perspective, the bash you are running turns out to be exactly GNU bash, totally unmodified.

  shephard@singtest:~$ uname -a
  Linux singtest 3.13.0-24-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 10 19:11:08 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
  shephard@singtest:~$ ls -lart /bin/bash
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1037528 Jun 24  2016 /bin/bash
  shephard@singtest:~$

  root@Skully:~# uname -a
  Linux Skully 4.4.0-43-Microsoft #1-Microsoft Wed Dec 31 14:42:53 PST 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
  root@Skully:~# ls -lart /bin/bash
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1037528 Jun 24  2016 /bin/bash

 

And once WSL has been fired up, you can run any shell you want to .

  root@Skully:~# fish
  Welcome to fish, the friendly interactive shell
  Type help for instructions on how to use fish

Reading around the web - I note that Microsoft appears to be very careful about referring to "Bash/WSL" as a joint unit to refer to the Bash.exe component of WSL. Perhaps everyone on this thread (minus you and a few others) are the ones who are confused - perhaps the "Bash.exe" in Bash/WSL really is completely unrelated to "bash" the Bash shell? It may be the case that when I type "Bash.exe" from the start menu on Windows, the binary I'm running is completely unrelated to "bash" the linux shell - and this entire thing is a branding exercise. (as I think you've very patiently been trying to point out). Perhaps it would have made more sense to rename "Bash.exe" to "wsl.exe" - but then they wouldn't have been able to ride on Bash's branding...

The following link makes the distinction clear:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/faq

It's kind of Ironic when the one person being downvoted to oblivion for several days turns out to be the only one correct. But at least you won over one person. I'll never refer to it as anything other than WSL - and correct people who think they are running Bash (the GNU shell) when they type "Bash.exe."

Thanks.

Fair enough. Hope you can un-downvote the ones you downvoted. While comparing binaries by size can help, I recommend comparing binaries by hashing them (e.g: sha1sum). Usually better in terms of security.