Re: [Help-bash] Detecting shell type (ie: is/non interactive/ssh/login shell)

[Bob Proulx]

Assaf Gordon wrote:
> Instead of just asking if the shell is interactive or not, you
> likely want to know if the current session (inside your
> guake/konsole) is "busy" or not, i.e. what is running in the
> foreground.
> 
> I would suggest investigating an existing program that already tries
> to do such thing: tmux .  tmux ( the screen multiplexer

Well...  That is a little different case.  In that case the tmux (and
screen) program is the parent.  The shell is running as a child
process.  Parents can know a lot of information about their children
processes and can watch over them.  That's all okay.  And I am fine
with a parent observing the child and displaying what it is doing.

The part I didn't like is where the script program was trying to guess
intentions from the caller.  Was it intended to run as an interactive
script?  Intended to be a login script?  Intended to be running from
ssh from a remote system?  I don't think it is possible to guess the
caller's intentions.  And trying to do so in fragile ways creates a
program maintenance problem.  Remove those things and then I am happy
with things again.

> I know nothing about guake/konsole, but I would naively guess that
> you can know what is the shell process you've started inside it, and
> if it's not the 'active' one in the foreground, the console session
> is 'busy' (likely there will be many possible complications in
> practice, but still....).

If the question is how can a guake/konsole/something program know what
its children are doing then that is a completely different problem.  I
think what tmux is doing is too much creeping featurism.  But it is in
an okay place to be doing it.

Bob