How to make a GUI for bash scripts

Question

I want to make some graphical dialogs for my script but don't know how. I hear something about GTK-Server or something like that. If someone knows how to link Bash with tcl/tk I also be satisfied.

Please do not post something like "change to C++" because my project must be a script in Bash; there are no other options.

Any ideas?

EDIT: Thanks for answers but I don't want "graphics" as in colors in the console, but graphical windows which I can move, minimize etc. I will test xmessage, but I don't think that will be what I am searching for.

EDIT 2: I don't want make a simple dialog like yes/no, but some interface like progress bars and buttons, something like a game.

User · Answer

You could use dialog that is ncurses based or whiptail that is slang based   I think both have GTK or Tcl Tk bindings

User · Answer

You can gtk-server for this  Gtk-server is a program that runs in background and provides text-based interface to allow other programs  including bash scripts  to control it  It has examples for Bash  http   www gtk-server org demo-ipc bash txt  http   www gtk-server org demo-fifo bash txt

User · Answer

there is a command called dialog which uses the ncurses library   Dialog is a program that will let you to present a variety of questions or display messages using dialog boxes  from  a  shell  script    These types  of  dialog boxes are implemented  though not all are necessarily compiled into dialog    see http   pwet fr man linux commandes dialog

User · Answer

Please  take a look at my library  http   sites google com site easybashgui  It is intended to handle  with the same commands set  indifferently all four big tools  kdialog    Xdialog    cdialog  and  zenity   depending if X is running or not  if D E  is KDE or Gnome or other  There are 15 different functions   among them there are two called  progress  and  adjust        Bye  -

User · Answer

If you have Qt KDE installed  you can use kdialog  which pops up a Qt dialog window   You can easily specify to display a Yes No dialog  OK Cancel  simple text input  password input etc   You then have access to the return values from these dialogs at the shell

User · Answer

Before actually using GUI dialogues  consider using console prompts  Quite often you can get away with simple  y n   prompts  which in bash you achieve via the read command    read -p  Do something     if    REPLY     y     then     echo yay  fi   If console prompt s just won t cut it  Zenity is really easy to use  for example         zenity --error --text  Testing           zenity --question --text  Continue     This only works on Linux Gnome  or rather  it ll only be installed by default on such systems   The read method will work on pretty much any platform  including headless machines  or via SSH   If you need anything more complex than what read or Zenity provides   change to C    is really the best method  although I d recommend Python Ruby over C   for such shell-script-replacement tasks      I want to do simple interface for some strange game  the progress bar for health or something is the example for what I want  Variable  HEALTH  is 34  so make progress bar filled in 34 100   As a command-line script  it d use Python     export HEALTH 34   python -c  import os  print       int os environ get  HEALTH   0                                         Or to normalise the values between 1 and 78  so you don t get line-wrapping on a standard terminal size      python -c  import os  print       int  int os environ get  HEALTH   0     100 0    78     Zenity also has a Progress Dialog      bin sh   echo  10    sleep 1 echo    Updating mail logs    sleep 1 echo  20    sleep 1 echo    Resetting cron jobs    sleep 1 echo  50    sleep 1 echo  This line will just be ignored    sleep 1 echo  75    sleep 1 echo    Rebooting system    sleep 1 echo  100    sleep 1     zenity --progress     --title  Update System Logs      --text  Scanning mail logs         --percentage 0  if          -1     then         zenity --error             --text  Update canceled   fi   As I said before  if Zenity cannot do what you need  look into writing your game-thing as a  proper  script in Python Ruby Perl C   etc as it sounds like you re pushing the bounds of what a shell-script can do

User · Answer

If you want to write a graphical UI in bash, zenity is the way to go. This is what you can do with it:

Application Options:
  --calendar                                     Display calendar dialog
  --entry                                        Display text entry dialog
  --error                                        Display error dialog
  --info                                         Display info dialog
  --file-selection                               Display file selection dialog
  --list                                         Display list dialog
  --notification                                 Display notification
  --progress                                     Display progress indication dialog
  --question                                     Display question dialog
  --warning                                      Display warning dialog
  --scale                                        Display scale dialog
  --text-info                                    Display text information dialog

Combining these widgets you can create pretty usable GUIs. Of course, it's not as flexible as a toolkit integrated into a programming language, but in some cases it's really useful.

User · Answer

Well  if you can use Tcl Tk in your environment  you probably should write a TCL script and use that   You might also look at wish

[user-interface] How to make a GUI for bash scripts?

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