Best practice for executing multi-line shell scripts with tart exec without hanging

[DominikMoreira]

Hello all,

I've run into a specific issue and would appreciate some guidance on the recommended best practice.

Goal:
I want to execute a multi-line shell script within a Tart VM using a single tart exec command. This is crucial for running build steps that require a specific environment, such as sourcing a conanbuild.sh script before running ccache or xcodebuild.

Problem:
My Jenkins pipeline hangs indefinitely when I try to execute a multi-line script. It doesn't fail; it simply never completes.

What I've Tried:

My current approach is to build a helper function in my Jenkinsfile (Groovy) that takes a multi-line script block and executes it.

Attempt: Chaining commands with &&

My attempt was to join each line of the script with && and pass it to zsh -c.

Here is an example of the final command that gets executed:

tart exec my-vm-image zsh -c 'source /path/to/conanbuild.sh && cache -s && cache --show-log-stats'

Syntactically, this command is correct. However, this is the version that hangs. My hypothesis is that something within the source conanbuild.sh script (or a similar complex script) is causing the non-interactive shell to block, perhaps by waiting for input or starting a process that doesn't terminate properly.

My Question:

Is there a simpler or more idiomatic way to use tart exec to run multi-line shell scripts? Did I miss a specific flag or a recommended pattern for zsh -c that would prevent it from hanging? My goal is to find the most straightforward and reliable method.

[edigaryev]

You can execute scripts simply by starting a shell remotely and piping the script contents:

tart exec -i macos zsh < test.sh

Example:

% cat test.sh                         
#!/bin/zsh

echo "first instruction"

echo "second instruction"

% tart exec -i macos zsh < test.sh          
first instruction
second instruction