moturus/motor-os

Improve rush (the shell in Motor OS)

Open

#33 opened on Oct 24, 2025

View on GitHub
 (2 comments) (0 reactions) (1 assignee)Rust (34 forks)auto 404
good first issuehelp wanted

Repository metrics

Stars
 (1,087 stars)
PR merge metrics
 (PR metrics pending)

Description

Motor OS has a small unixy shell rush that is incomplete and buggy. It's code is also poorly designed and need to be refactored and cleaned up.

There are several specific issues that need addressing:

  • prepended env vars don't work if they contain underscores, i.e. FOO=bar printenv works, but FOO_1=bar printenv does not;
  • piping, as in cmd1 | cmd2, doesn't work;
  • tabbing support, as in ls foo/, could be useful.

I think using shlex crate, or similar, is warranted. Maybe also glob.

Note: rush shell can be compiled and run on Linux, no need to cross-compile it for Motor OS during development.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Focus on the rush shell source code in src/bin/rush/. Start by understanding how environment variables are parsed and how command execution works. For the env var underscore issue, examine the parsing logic. For piping, look at how commands are executed and where pipes are handled. Consider using the shlex crate as suggested.
Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli
Issue type
Refactor
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Mostly clear
Prerequisites
Rust
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
45