esh — Easy Shell for Windows

esh (Easy Shell) is an experimental command-line shell written in modern C++ for Windows.

The project focuses on understanding shell internals, command execution flow, and Windows API–based system programming rather than providing a fully featured production shell.

esh is a completed learning-oriented systems programming project.

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Goals

• Understand how a shell parses and executes commands
• Learn Windows API fundamentals relevant to process and file management
• Design a clean internal command/flag/symbol architecture
• Gain experience with Unicode handling (UTF-8 / UTF-16) on Windows
• Build a non-trivial C++ project with clear structure and layering

Features

• Built-in commands (file, process, system, and shell commands)
• Command grouping and internal command registry
• Flag-based command behavior
• Pipeline and redirection parsing
• JSON-based help system
• Unicode-safe input and output
• Colored console output

Project Structure

esh/
├─ src/
│  ├─ core/        # Core shell engine (parser, lexer, execution flow)
│  ├─ commands/    # Built-in command implementations
│  ├─ execution/   # Command execution and process control
│  ├─ file/        # File-related commands and utilities
│  ├─ process/     # Process-related commands
│  ├─ env/         # Environment-related commands
│  ├─ shell/       # Shell-specific commands and logic
│  ├─ system/      # System information and system commands
│  ├─ history/     # Command history management
│  ├─ platform/    # Platform-specific utilities (Windows)
│  ├─ headers/     # Public headers and shared interfaces
│  ├─ external/    # Third-party headers (e.g. JSON)
│  └─ consoleOperations # Console-related operations
│
├─ resources.rc    # Embeds json file to .exe
├─ app.rc          # Windows resource file
├─ icon/esh.ico    # Application icon
│
├─ build/          # Build output (not tracked)
├─ esh.json        # Command help and metadata
├─ CMakeLists.txt  # CMake configuration
├─ Makefile        # Build entry point
├─ README.md
└─ LICENSE

Build Information

• Language: C++ (modern standard)
• Compiler: LLVM Clang (Windows)
• Platform: Windows (Win32 API)
• Encoding: UTF-16 internally, UTF-8 at boundaries
• Build system: CMake and Makefile

Requirements

To build and run esh, you need:

• Windows (Win32 API required)
• LLVM Clang (clang-cl) (as the C/C++ compiler)
• CMake
• Make
• A Windows environment capable of building Win32 applications

esh relies directly on the Windows API and is not portable to other platforms.

Build & Run

From the project root directory:

make # make configures and generates build file of the project using CMake and Clang
make run # compiles the project and generates esh.exe

Project Status

This project is feature-complete and not under active development. The repository is preserved as a reference and learning artifact.

Versioning

Current version: 0.1.0

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
See the LICENSE file for details.

Disclaimer

esh is an educational and experimental project. It is not intended for production use. You may encounter bugs while working with esh.

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Author

Habil Eren Türker