Install gqlplus with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• gqlplus

Project history

The official homepage says GQLPlus was originally written by Ljubomir J. Buturovic of San Francisco State University and later maintained by Jess Portnoy. The project was designed to stay close enough to SQL*Plus that users could substitute it without retraining.

The SourceForge file history shows releases back to 2002, with `gqlplus-1.1` appearing on 2002-06-09. The project later published source tarballs, RPMs, DEBs, and macOS binaries.

The GIT repository browser records a first Git commit on 2014-08-08, after years of SourceForge file releases. That makes the code browser a later hosting artifact rather than the beginning of the software.

Adoption history

GQLPlus targeted a very specific annoyance for Oracle users on Unix terminals: plain SQL*Plus did not offer the shell-like editing and history behavior users expected from interactive command-line tools.

Its adoption pattern was small but practical. SourceForge distributed source archives, Debian packages, RPM packages, and a macOS binary, while Homebrew kept the single `gqlplus` executable available for macOS users who needed a SQL*Plus-compatible wrapper.

How it is used

Users place the single compiled executable on PATH and run it instead of `sqlplus`. GQLPlus delegates the database interaction model to SQL*Plus compatibility while improving the line-editing experience with GNU Readline.

The tool can read table and view names at startup for completion, with the official files page noting synchronization behavior and restart requirements after schema changes.

Why package nerds care

GQLPlus is a package-archive survivor: a small C wrapper around a proprietary database client that made Unix terminal work less painful without requiring a new database IDE.

It matters to package nerds because it captures a common open-source packaging pattern from the 2000s: wrap a vendor CLI, add readline, ship tar.gz plus distro-native packages, and let users keep their existing workflow.

Timeline

• 2002-06-09: SourceForge files include `gqlplus-1.1`.
• 2003-01-22: SourceForge files include an early numbered release folder after `gqlplus-1.1`.
• 2006-12-02: SourceForge files show continued release activity in the 1.x line.
• 2011-12-19: SourceForge files show GQLPlus 1.14 packages.
• 2012-01-23: GQLPlus 1.15 source tarball is published.
• 2014-08-08: SourceForge Git repository records its first Git commit.
• 2014-08-19: GQLPlus 1.16 source tarball is published.

Related projects

• Oracle SQL*Plus is the client interface GQLPlus emulates and wraps.
• GNU Readline provides the editing and history behavior named by the official homepage.

Sources

• https://gqlplus.sourceforge.net/
• https://sourceforge.net/p/gqlplus/gqlplus-code
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/gqlplus/files/
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/gqlplus/rss?path=/