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Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

> I think we should really be working to deprecate large bash scripts.

I second this: I myself have a problem here, which, I guess is somewhat related: I try to keep everything universal and each time I try to generalize what I'm trying to achieve through some sort of abstraction. As a consequence I keep adding functions and aliases to my (zsh/bash)rc to the point where they become absolutely unmanageable. At this very moment zshrc is 8000+ lines long. Sure, I have a cronjob which backs it up occasionally but it's more of a maintenance/readability hell.

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Have you considered that your run config is probably not the place for this sort of thing? You could instead have focused libraries in smaller files located at /usr/local/lib/ or wherever tickles your fancy. Then source them as needed from scripts.

I do that too but usually ends up being harder to keep track of them and backup, even if I keep them in a separate directory and added it to $PATH.

Wow, 8 thousand lines is pretty insane. When my bashrc started to get long, I started to separate things into different files and source them. And then that got too complicated so then I made them separate executables with different directories. But then I couldn't reuse functionality as easily so then I found myself making a package manager. And now I'm moving some of that stuff _BACK_ into my bashrc (sort of). It seems there is really no end...

This is one of the reasons I like GUIs. I can recreate almost all my configuration from scratch on a brand new Mint install in 15 minutes aside from a few VS code settings I'd need Google for.

My .xonshrc just has a few visual tweaks. I have set up exactly zero cron jobs aside from maybe whatever mint's backup stuff uses for a timer for the snapshots. I don't have any custom bash scripts that I use, other than some build scripts and things like that, that live in project repos.

I call it "decustomizing" as a counterpoint to minimalism. I don't try to simplify my life, I try to remove customization and unusual tech, even if that means using a 100MB app instead of a 1kb script I'd have to maintain myself.

I've just... had about enough of small time garage tinkering level projects at this point, and have really started to appreciate monolithic opinionated systems. Stuff that lets you do anything, in exactly one way.

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