Without dash installed, cannot restart or quit Spacemacs

[numkem]

Description

If the dash shell isn't installed, it's not possible to quit or restart Spacemacs.

Reproduction guide 🪲

• Start Emacs
• Without dash shell binary installed, try to restart SPC q r or quit SPC q q Spacemacs

Observed behaviour: 👀 💔
apply: Searching for program: no such file or directory, global shows up in the message buffer. Cannot quit or restart Spacemacs.

Expected behaviour: ❤️ 😄
Spacemacs should be quitting or restarting.

System Info 💻

• OS: gnu/linux
• Emacs: 24.5.1
• Spacemacs: 0.105.21
• Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. 1b5bc13)
• Graphic display: t
• Distribution: spacemacs
• Editing style: vim
• Completion: helm
• Layers:

(nginx
 (auto-completion :variables auto-completion-enable-help-tooltip t auto-completion-enable-sort-by-usage t)
 emacs-lisp themes-megapack git markdown
 (org :variables org-enable-github-support t)
 (shell :variables shell-default-height 30 shell-default-position 'bottom)
 (syntax-checking :variables syntax-checking-enable-tooltips nil)
 python spacemacs-layouts html ansible vagrant dockerfile sql javascript shell-scripts spell-checking restclient gtags fasd yaml deft ibuffer typescript fasd ranger search-engine shell ipython-notebook go mu4e evil-snipe java puppet)

[TheBB]

I don't know what the "dash" shell is, but apparently the error is that you are using the gtags layer but haven't installed gtags (the global executable which the error message is asking about).

[numkem]

I've noticed that I was missing global for using the gtags layer which I removed but isn't this a major bug that a layer would make it impossible to exit Spacemacs?

Either way after installing dash (some evil- plugin needs it apparently) it worked so I'm assuming that there is a bug that makes it not possible to exit Spacemacs if an external binary is missing.

[TheBB]

I still don't know what dash is. Could you enlighten me?

[numkem]

Dash seems to be a very simple and bare-bone shell. It doesn't have tab completion so it's pretty much as simple as it gets.

[jtbm37]

@TheBB /bin/sh is symlinked to /bin/dash, at least for me on Ubuntu ;)

[TheBB]

Are you suggesting that there is no /bin/sh by default on Ubuntu unless you install a non-default package? I find that hard to believe.

[korayal]

I have Ubuntu Xenial (16.04) and I also have /bin/sh symlinked to dash

[github-actions]

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