Hi everyone,
I’m excited to announce the release of Leave Script Behind (LSB) — a cross‑platform tool I’ve been developing over the past few years. Originally created for developers and DevOps engineers, LSB has matured into a general‑purpose workflow engine that I believe can benefit a much wider audience.
Why LSB?
As more services move online, developers increasingly work in DevOps environments where command‑line tools and shell scripting are part of daily life — from coding and deployment to live‑site investigation and mitigation. Depending on the operating system, users may need to work with PowerShell, bash, zsh, or other shells, each with its own syntax, command set, parameters, and quirks.
Shells are powerful, but they come with challenges:
- A steep learning curve for new users
- Inconsistent syntax and command behavior across platforms
- Plain‑text input/output that is difficult to navigate or reuse
- Limited ability to interact with intermediate data
- Scripts that are hard to maintain, remember, or safely reuse
LSB was designed to address these pain points.
What LSB Provides
LSB introduces a GUI‑driven, interactive, reusable approach to working with shell commands and scripts. Instead of memorizing commands or manually parsing text output, users work through LSB views — reusable, configurable workflows that combine UI controls, data visualization, and script execution.
An LSB view functions like a script file, but with far richer capabilities:
- Interactive Data Visualization
- List views, tree views, chart views, and more
- Visual graph types including bar charts, pie charts, histograms, heat maps
- User‑Driven Workflow Navigation
- Select data entries with the mouse to drive the next step
- Interact with intermediate results instead of reading raw text
- Flexible Input Controls
- Text, numbers, file pickers, and other typed inputs
- Layout defined through simple XML configuration
- Integrated Data Connectivity
- Built‑in support for SQL databases, Web APIs, and other data sources
- Multi‑Language Scripting
- Embedded Lua for cross‑platform logic
- Support for any shell available on the host OS
- Ability to mix Lua, PowerShell, bash, zsh, and more within a single view
- Reusable Workflows
- Save and reuse views to eliminate repetitive command‑line work
- Share views through the LSB repository so others can benefit
- A simple way for developers to publish their workflows and gain visibility
For end users, this means they can complete complex tasks without knowing the underlying commands. For developers, it means they can build powerful workflows using the languages and shells they prefer — or combine them for maximum flexibility.
Sample Views
Chart View Sample
This view demonstrates the ChartView control and renders multiple chart types using data generated by embedded Lua scripts. Details about each UI component are available in the built‑in help documentation.
File Explorer View
A cross‑platform file browser implemented entirely as an LSB view. It works on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and shows how LSB can be used to build practical, interactive tools.
Graphviz View
This view uses the Graphviz dot command to provide a lightweight graph‑editing environment with live preview. A TextInput widget serves as the editor, the dot tool renders the text into SVG, and a WebView displays the resulting graph. With a few additional controls and Lua integration, the view also supports opening and saving files.
Additional sample views are included in the default repository and will be automatically downloaded on first launch via Git.
Try It Out
The current version is 0.7.2, and it is available for download at:
https://github.com/xjluo-lsb/lsb.views/releases
If you try it out, I’d love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to share suggestions or report issues at:
https://github.com/xjluo-lsb/lsb.views/issues
Thank you.
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