What language could be used to complement sh ?

sh is easy to use to copy/paste from a an howto and make a script

sh is not the easiest when it comes to complex actions and data management.

The choice has to take the following into account:

must be easy to have on all unix/bsd/linux ( including mipsel, arm, MacOs ...)

must stay small to install on the remote machine ( ie: the jvm is too big )

must find a way to keep the easyness to script actions and test them

must not have to much difficulty between interpreter versions

must not have a lot of dependencies ( if possible standalone )

C

Would have to make it easy to cross compile

Could implement all the requirements (ssl/ssh/rsync/regex) in one binary

Creating types will not be as easy as creating a shell script, what could be the alternative/mix ?

Lisp - sbcl

strange language but could be used for this kind of usage

installed the binaries from their site: it works

they give binary versions for a lot of arch/os

Javascript

Using v8 would make it easy to use anywhere

I did not find how to interact with the system

If using rhino: too big, needs java

Perl

By default on a lot of plateforms

ugly

used a lot for othe projects

Python

too big

pb with version change

some libs are depending on C (arch pb)

Ruby

Used by puppet and chef ...

Not sure how portable/light it is

Java

Tooooooooo big !

Lua

tried to download the standalone binary and use: pb with missing lib ... not as standalone as needed

Erlang

kind of big for an embeddable version: 50MB