Bash

Last updated: Oct 27, 2026

---

Rationale

Bash is the primary shell of Fluid Attacks.

These are the primary reasons why Fluid Attacks selected it:

• It is open source.
• It is POSIX-compliant.
• It is one of the most reliable shells available.

Alternatives

Zsh

• It is open source.
• It is a much more modern shell.
• It is the default shell for macOS. Thus, Fluid Attacks can use one shell for all tasks.
• It is one of the most reliable shells available.
• It supports many plugins through Oh My Zsh.
• It has better autocompletion support.
• It supports built-in syntax highlighting.
• It has linters and formatters, which increase the code quality.

Zsh can be a very good alternative for almost all the components that Fluid Attacks builds in Bash at this time. It gives a balance between modernity, flexibility, stability, and development experience.

Xonsh

• It is open source.
• It is a much more modern shell.
• It integrates with Python. This increases the flexibility and decreases the cognitive load on developers.
• It can use all the Python ecosystem, which increases the flexibility.
• It does not have linters and formatters, which decreases the code quality.

Xonsh can be a good alternative for almost all the components that Fluid Attacks builds in Bash at this time. It gives a balance between modernity, flexibility, and development experience.

Usage

All the Amazon EC2 servers use Bash. These servers are almost all the infrastructure of Fluid Attacks.