Windows Cross-Platform Shell – Why Most Use Cygwin and Not Uwin?

I reverse the question:

Why would Microsoft being interested in supporting such a format?

• Few wide-spread portable players support it (this is likely to change, at least I hope)
• mp3s are good enough for most users (the average user doesn't know what a OGG is)
• Why should microsoft spend time and resources on this if a third-party can implement a ogg codec for Windows Media Player for free?

Possible Uses

Fast Prototyping

You could do this with Groovy or others, so that's not a very strong point, but as CRaSH gives you code-level access to the JVM and the processes it runs, it may come in handy to just keep a JVM running and experiment with small code snippets (for instance, using it as a REPL to implement solutions to StackOverflow questions).

The JCR extension would seem potentially useful to supplement this, by giving you shell access to remote repositories, and contains a notion of workspace to separate projects.

Interacting with a Running Process

I could see this being an interesting use case. I don't know of many good process inspection command-line tools for JVM processes, apart from the JDK-packaged ones. CRaSH might help in interacting with them in novel ways.

For instance, you can use the Attach Mode to attach to a running JVM, and then use the thread command to ls, dump or interrupt threads.

You could also write some additional control commands for non-programmers to use CRaSH to perform routine maintenance and monitoring.

Content Repository Management

The JCR extension seems to be very interesting as well, as it would give a Java-scriptable access to remote development environments. It could also simply allow content-editors to access and edit remote content, when used in the context of CMS-type apps built on top of a JCR-capable content repository.

What Others Say About CRaSH

• An introductory blog post by the CRaSH author, about its use at eXoPlatform. And the fact that it is officially supported by eXoPlatform is an indicator that's it potentially good stuff :)

• Not much to read, but of interest: French technologist Didier Girard re-posted it.

Summary

Basically, I see it as a power-user or administrator interface to JVM processes, built on top of Groovy and networking protocols. So it combines the power of scripting with a nice facade and some built-in connectors.

Note on Flexibility

I agree with SK-logic: most of this can be done with most JVM-languages, and they provide more and flexibility. But CRaSH might provide a shorter path to achieving such goals.

The same applies to the JCR extension capabilities: you can achieve this by glueing together a few age-old and time-tested tools. But this might be a shorter and simpler path (like commands for the heroku platform, or PaaS services, for instance).