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child_process.spawn adds flags that might cause non-native shells to fail on windows #19947
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FWIW, we warn about this in docs:
https://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html#child_process_shell_requirements
Yep, and it doesn't seem like an unreasonable restriction to me. I don't really see how we could improve it either.
@bnoordhuis what do you say about these options:
- Having shellOptions arg with default value '/d /s /c' on windows and '-sc' on unix
- Skip adding the options if shell string already contains flags (having either " -" or " /"
- Having 2 different optional args - shshell and ntshell that gets the right options accordingly (without checking the platform)
(1) and (3) are fixing a problem that isn't really a problem (don't use
.shell, spawn the shell directly) and (2) is the kind of heuristic that can have false positives (e.g./is also a path separator.)I mean, yes, there are ways to solve your issue with more API options but the extra complexity doesn't seem worth it.
I'll close this out. It's been two weeks and no one spoke out in favor of making changes.
On Windows, when child_process.spawn is given the optional shell parameter (#4598) it makes an assumption that the shell would understand the /c /s flags (cmd.exe or powershell).
This limits the option to use bash (using WSL) on windows.
Can by bypassed by:
But would be nice to have a better solution.
Thanks,
Idan