zish - A Minimal Shell in Zig#

A POSIX-ish shell written in Zig with GNU Readline and SQLite-backed persistent state.

The Idea#

Your shell environment lives in a single SQLite file (~/.zish.db). History, environment variables, aliases — everything is portable. Copy the file to another machine and pick up right where you left off.

# On machine A
scp ~/.zish.db user@machine-b:~/.zish.db

# On machine B
zish  # all your history, aliases, and env vars are there

Or use a custom database:

zish --db ~/projects/myproject/.zish.db

Features#

SQLite-backed persistence: History, environment, aliases, settings
Prefix-based history search: Type git then press ↑ to find only git commands
Rich history: Every command stored with timestamp, working directory, and exit code
Portable environment: export persists to DB, loads on startup
Persistent aliases: alias writes to DB, available across sessions
Command lists: && and || for conditional execution
Command substitution: $(command) captured and expanded inline
Glob expansion: *, ?, [...] patterns via POSIX glob(3)
Pipes & redirects: |, >, >>, <
Variable expansion: $HOME, $USER, $? (last exit code)
Exit code indicator: Red ✘ in prompt when last command failed
Alias expansion: First word is checked against alias DB
SIGINT handling: Ctrl-C won’t kill the shell

Builtins#

Command	Description
`cd [dir]`	Change directory (~ supported)
`pwd`	Print working directory
`exit`	Exit the shell
`export KEY=VAL`	Set & persist environment variable
`export`	List persisted environment variables
`unset KEY`	Remove environment variable
`alias name=command`	Set & persist alias
`alias`	List all aliases
`unalias name`	Remove alias
`history`	Show readline history
`history search PREFIX`	Search DB history by prefix
`history stats`	Show history statistics
`query SQL`	Execute SQL, output as table (default)
`query --json SQL`	Execute SQL, output as JSON
`query --csv SQL`	Execute SQL, output as CSV
`dbinfo`	Show database information
`help`	Show help

Database Schema#

history     (id, command, cwd, timestamp, exit_code)
environment (key, value)
aliases     (name, command)
settings    (key, value)

The database uses WAL mode for performance and safe concurrent access.

Build#

Prerequisites#

Zig >= 0.15.0
~~GNU Readline development headers~~
~~SQLite3 development headers~~

Current version provides Linenoise and SQLite Amalgamate compiled statically to improve portability.

Compile & Run#

zig build
./zig-out/bin/zish

Static Linking#

For a fully portable binary, change build.zig:

exe.linkSystemLibrary2("readline", .{ .preferred_link_mode = .static });
exe.linkSystemLibrary2("sqlite3", .{ .preferred_link_mode = .static });

Query Builtin#

Direct SQL access to your shell database with multiple output formats:

# Table format (default)
query SELECT command, exit_code FROM history WHERE cwd LIKE '%/myproject%' LIMIT 5

# JSON output - pipe to jq, store, or send to an API
query --json SELECT key, value FROM environment

# CSV output - import into spreadsheets or other tools
query --csv SELECT command, count(*) as n FROM history GROUP BY command ORDER BY n DESC LIMIT 20

History Search#

Prefix-based search is built in — no ~/.inputrc needed:

Key	Action
`↑`	Search backward (prefix match)
`↓`	Search forward (prefix match)
`Ctrl-P`	Search backward (prefix match)
`Ctrl-N`	Search forward (prefix match)

Additionally, history search git searches the SQLite database directly, showing timestamp, exit status, and working directory for each match.

License#

GPL-3.0-or-later