Pierre Neidhardt (ambrevar) has a very interesting post on the relative merits of Emacs’ Eshell and Bash using Meta+x shell. Like me, he is, or was, a longtime user, adherent, and booster of Eshell. Lately, though, he’s been feeling some of its limitations and has moved to invoking Bash with Meta+x shell.
His post describes the problems he encountered with his transition and some of his solutions to them. It’s a balanced discussion that considers the case for and against Eshell. Ultimately, Neidhardt has become comfortable with switching to using Bash.
I’m still happily in the Eshell camp most of the time. I’ll use a regular shell if I want to build a pipeline with indirection or sometimes just if I have a complicated pipeline. Lately, when I want to invoke a shell from Emacs I use vterm. I find it a better experience than an Meta+x shell invocation.
If you aren’t an Eshell user, you should give it a try. If you are an Eshell user you should take a look Neidhardt’s post to see if it makes sense to switch or at least use both. Either way, it’s just another example of how Emacs lets us have it our way. Or even both ways.