Assembly Line

Elvish

Powerful scripting language & versatile interactive shell

Elvish is an open-source programming language project on GitHub under the BSD-2-Clause license (permissive), with 6.4k stars. It is built with Go. Its last push was 7 months ago.

Stars
6.4k
License
BSD-2-Clause
Activity
Slowing
Latest release
v0.21.0

Code on GitHub Website

Judgement

What it is
Developer tool
What it does
An interactive shell and scripting language with structured data pipelines, a built-in file manager and directory history, shipped as one static binary.
Adopt it when
You want a shell with a real programming language and are happy to leave POSIX compatibility.
Watch out
Pre-1.0 with occasional breaking changes, and not compatible with bash scripts.
Ready for
Usable
Runs as
Command line
Built with
Go
How established
Established: started 13 years ago, latest release v0.21.0.
What the license allows
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-03 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Go

Follow it down: Elvish → Go → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

Open-source alternatives to Elvish

  1. 1
    Go golang

    The Go programming language

    Developer tool Production-ready You build backend services or command-line tools and value simple code, fast builds and single-binary deploys.

    ★ 140k BSD-3-Clause Go Active, pushed today
  2. 2
    Rust rust-lang

    Empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.

    Developer tool Production-ready You need C-level performance with memory safety, for systems software, CLIs, services or WebAssembly.

    ★ 121k Apache-2.0 Rust Active, pushed today
  3. 3
    TypeScript microsoft

    TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that compiles to clean JavaScript output.

    Developer tool Production-ready You write JavaScript projects of any size and want static types and better editor tooling.

    ★ 112k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
  4. 4
    CPython python

    The Python programming language

    Developer tool Production-ready You write Python, or need to build, embed or contribute to the interpreter itself.

    ★ 78k See repository Python Active, pushed today
  5. 5
    Swift swiftlang

    The Swift Programming Language

    Developer tool Production-ready You build iOS or macOS apps, or want Swift on Linux servers.

    ★ 71k Apache-2.0 Swift Active, pushed today
  6. 6
    Kotlin JetBrains

    The Kotlin Programming Language.

    Developer tool Production-ready You build Android apps or JVM services and want a more concise, null-safe alternative to Java.

    ★ 54k See repository Kotlin Active, pushed today
  7. 7
    Julia JuliaLang

    The Julia Programming Language

    Developer tool Production-ready You do scientific computing, simulation or numerical work where Python is too slow and C is too painful.

    ★ 49k MIT Julia Active, pushed today
  8. 8
    Php-src php

    The PHP Interpreter

    Developer tool Production-ready You build or host PHP applications, or need to build PHP or its extensions from source.

    ★ 42k BSD-3-Clause C Active, pushed today

Stars, license and activity come from GitHub and refresh on a rolling hourly schedule. The project's own description is quoted as written.