Windows cached tasks can skip Node CLI execution through PowerShell package shims

[SegaraRai]

Summary

On Windows, a cached task that runs a package binary through the package-manager shim can complete without running the underlying Node CLI.

This appears to be exposed by the Windows .cmd shim to PowerShell .ps1 rewrite added in #345. The repro uses a local package binary and shows that direct Node invocation works while the cached PowerShell shim path does not.

Reproduction

Minimal repro:

https://github.com/SegaraRai/vitetask-repro05

GitHub Actions run showing Linux passing and Windows failing:

https://github.com/SegaraRai/vitetask-repro05/actions/runs/25041476175

The repro defines a local package binary, marker-cli. It does two things:

• prints MARKER_STDOUT:<label> to stdout
• writes .markers/<label>.json

This distinguishes stdout capture failures from the CLI not running at all.

The task config is:

export default defineConfig({
  run: {
    tasks: {
      "shim:cached": {
        command: "marker-cli shim-cached",
        cache: true,
      },
      "node:cached": {
        command: "node ./packages/marker-cli/bin/marker-cli.mjs node-cached",
        cache: true,
      },
      "shim:uncached": {
        command: "marker-cli shim-uncached",
        cache: false,
      },
    },
  },
});

Manual steps:

vp install

Remove-Item .markers -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
vp cache clean
vp run shim:uncached
Get-Content .markers/shim-uncached.json

Remove-Item .markers -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
vp cache clean
vp run node:cached
Get-Content .markers/node-cached.json

Remove-Item .markers -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
vp cache clean
vp run shim:cached
Get-Content .markers/shim-cached.json

Expected behavior

On Windows, vp run shim:cached should run the package binary and produce both:

MARKER_STDOUT:shim-cached

and:

.markers/shim-cached.json

Actual behavior

On Windows, vp run shim:cached logs the task command:

$ marker-cli shim-cached

but does not print:

MARKER_STDOUT:shim-cached

and does not create:

.markers/shim-cached.json

The following control cases both work on Windows:

• marker-cli shim-uncached with cache: false
• node ./packages/marker-cli/bin/marker-cli.mjs node-cached with cache: true

The same workflow passes on Linux.

Related symptom / search keywords

In the original project where this was first noticed, the same Windows cached package-shim path sometimes opened a new terminal window and showed this process start error:

Error 2147942632 (0x800700e8) occurred while starting "<node.exe>" "<package cli js>"

The localized Windows message looked like:

'"C:\...\node.exe" C:\...\node_modules\.bin/../<package>/bin.js ...' の起動時にエラー 2147942632 (0x800700e8) が発生しました

Search keywords: 2147942632, 0x800700e8, node.exe, node_modules\.bin

[SegaraRai]

I dug into this and the root cause appears to be simple: cached task execution sanitizes the environment on Windows and drops PATHEXT, so PowerShell package shims can fail to resolve node.exe.

I opened a minimal fix that preserves PATHEXT in the default Windows env passthrough: #366