Scribblings and Geekery

Via One Thing Well:

Babun is a linux-like console on a Windows host…

Babun features the following:

* Pre-configured Cygwin with a lot of addons
* Silent command-line installer, no admin rights required
* pact - advanced package manager (like apt-get or yum)
* xTerm-256 compatible console
* HTTP(s) proxying support
* Plugin-oriented architecture
* Pre-configured git and shell
* Integrated oh-my-zsh
* Auto update feature

I have a set of servers in our data center which must run Windows Server, and write log files out via logback, which I'd love to be able to tail on a semi-regular basis.¹ I tried using the GNU Coreutils package, but it complained about the file. I tried this wicked long PowerShell command:

1

Get-Content -Path "C:\path\to\file.log" -Wait

...but it did not work, and I have no idea why, because PowerShell might as well be Sanskrit.²

I also tried tailforwin, for which I had no expectation of success having been written when I was still in college for operating systems few people use anymore.

I could have used Cygwin, but these servers have no external access to the Internet³, and while I could have built my own standalone installer... I strongly dislike it, and dealing with mirrors makes me angsty.

Enter Babun, which gave me everything I wanted⁴ in one handy package requiring no admin rights to install. I ran into issue #90 right away, but I had the same problem back when I used Cygwin and wasn't greatly surprised by it. Other than that, and needing to navigate out of the fake root filesystem hierarchy, it's an incredibly complete 1.0.0 release.