Shell Engineering

Comprehensive guidelines for writing production-quality shell scripts based on Google's Shell Style Guide.

When to Use Shell

• Small utilities and simple wrapper scripts
• Scripts calling other tools with straightforward logic
• Rewrite in a structured language (Go, Python) when exceeding ~100 lines or using complex control flow

Shell Choice

• Bash is the only permitted shell for executables
• Start scripts with #!/bin/bash with minimal flags
• Libraries must have .sh extension and not be executable
• SUID/SGID are forbidden on shell scripts

File Structure