MOSS — POSIX Shell & Web Terminal

A POSIX compliant Unix shell written in C with 13 builtins, pipeline execution, and a real-time web terminal GUI served from a single zero dependency binary.

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Features

CLI Shell

• 13 builtin commands — cd, pwd, echo, ls, export, env, unset, whoami, clear, help, type, history, exit
• Pipeline execution — multi-stage pipes via fork() / execvp() / pipe() / dup2()
• Scrollable history — circular buffer with configurable capacity, persistent to disk
• Exponential backoff retry — resilient cd path resolution with up to 3 retries
• 168 cmocka unit tests — 11 test suites, zero-warning build (-Wall -Wextra -Wpedantic)

Web Terminal GUI

• Real-time browser terminal — xterm.js real-time rendering
• PTY-based shell multiplexing — forkpty() spawns the shell inside a pseudo-terminal, I/O streamed over WebSocket
• TIOCSWINSZ dynamic resize — browser window resize triggers PTY ioctl, shell redraws instantly
• Zero-dependency deployment — 282 KB single binary with all HTML/CSS/JS embedded at compile time
• Badass UI — neon cyan/magenta frame, scanlines, custom scrollbars, Space Grotesk + Cascadia Code fonts
• Non-blocking I/O — O_NONBLOCK on PTY master fd, epoll-based event loop via Mongoose

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Screenshot

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Architecture

Browser (xterm.js)
      │ WebSocket
      ▼
moss-web.exe (Mongoose HTTP/WS server)
      │ read/write master_fd
      ▼
PTY (forkpty) ─── shell.exe (MOSS shell)

• shell.exe — the CLI shell binary (POSIX, ~136 KB)
• moss-web.exe — the web server binary (Mongoose + embedded frontend, ~282 KB)
• scripts/embed.pl — build tool that bakes frontend files into C byte arrays
• lib/mongoose/ — Cesanta Mongoose v7.22 (single-file HTTP/WebSocket library)

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Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/MM120-i/MOSS-Shell.git
cd MOSS-Shell

CLI Shell

make
./shell

Web Terminal

make
make web
./run.sh web

Then open http://localhost:8080 in your browser. Set a custom port with MOSS_PORT=9090 ./moss-web.exe.

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Tech Stack

Category	Technology
Language	C (C17, POSIX)
Compiler	GCC
Build	GNU Make
Testing	cmocka (168 tests, 11 suites)
CI	GitHub Actions (Ubuntu)
Web Server	Mongoose (embedded, single-file)
Terminal	xterm.js + xterm-addon-fit
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Cygwin

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Builtin Commands

Command	Description
cd [dir]	Change directory (~, -, relative paths, 3-retry backoff)
pwd	Print working directory
echo [args...]	Print arguments to stdout
ls [-la] [path]	List directory (custom implementation, color output)
export NAME=VAL	Set environment variable
env	Print all environment variables
unset NAME	Remove environment variable
whoami	Print current user
clear	Clear terminal (ANSI escape)
help	List all builtins
type [cmd]	Identify builtin vs. external command
history [-c]	View or clear command history
exit	Exit the shell

External commands are passed through to execvp() and resolved from system PATH.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE