Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

[pradyuman]

I can't figure out how to use the new bash on Ubuntu on windows as the default shell for spacemacs.

This was my config:

(shell :variables
    shell-default-shell 'ansi-term
    shell-default-term-shell "C:/Windows/System32/bash.exe"
    shell-default-height 30
    shell-default-position 'bottom)

I tried with shell, term, and ansi-term and none of them worked. Also tried invoking via M-x term [path]

[NJBS]

I don't believe there's much spacemacs can do about this. This is a known (long standing) issue with the Bash on Ubuntu on Windows process.

M-: (start-file-process "bash" "bash-buff" "C:/Windows/System32/bash.exe")

Process bash exited abnormally with code 255
Error: 0x80070057

See microsoft/WSL#2 for more discussion.

[pradyuman]

Thanks for the information! I think that we should keep this issue open till Microsoft fixes the issue so that others can refer to it as an open issue with spacemacs, but not necessarily a problem with spacemacs itself.

[ecoerod]

As a small update to this issue, the upstream bug in microsoft/WSL#2 should have been fixed in the newest Insiders release (Windows build 14986). However, it's still impossible to set up any Bash shell in Windows as a terminal (tried with Git-Bash as well), being given an error like:

apply: Spawning child process: Invalid argument

This is the same error with term and ansi-term. shell does work if you run bash from the initial terminal, sort of, but It won't show a prompt and won't send commands to bash correctly:

ls
/bin/bash: line 1: $'ls\r': command not found

eshell works better, but it won't still show any prompt at all.

[github-actions]

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