State of Windows support ?

[jrfnl]

I was wondering what the current status is for running bashunit on Windows OS ?

I thought it was supported, but I'm not having much luck getting it running on Windows.

Examples:

$ bashunit --help
******  B A T C H   R E C U R S I O N  exceeds STACK limits ******
Recursion Count=339, Stack Usage=90 percent
******       B A T C H   PROCESSING IS   A B O R T E D      ******

$ bashunit --version
******  B A T C H   R E C U R S I O N  exceeds STACK limits ******
Recursion Count=339, Stack Usage=90 percent
******       B A T C H   PROCESSING IS   A B O R T E D      ******

$ bashunit --init tests
******  B A T C H   R E C U R S I O N  exceeds STACK limits ******
Recursion Count=339, Stack Usage=90 percent
******       B A T C H   PROCESSING IS   A B O R T E D      ******

Additional info

In case it helps, this is how I downloaded and am running bashunit:

• Downloaded the latest version straight from the Releases page.
• Placed it in a directory in the Windows PATH.
• Tried to run it unsuccessfully ("'bashunit' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.").
• Added a bashunit.bat file with the following contents in the same directory as the bashunit file:

  @echo off
  
  call "bashunit" %*
  
  ECHO Exit code is %errorlevel%
  

• Got it running, but not working (see above).

[antonio-gg-dev]

Hello @jrfnl

bashunit is designed to run in Bash environments, not CMD (the default shell on Windows).

To use bashunit on Windows, you need to run it from a terminal that uses Bash, for example, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) or Git Bash. If you use WSL, keep in mind it has its own environment and does not use the Windows PATH, but rather Bash’s export system. You can find instructions online to configure that easily.

As for the recursion error you're getting, it's happening because your .bat file is calling itself when trying to execute bashunit, which causes an infinite loop and eventually crashes the stack. This is expected behavior when running from CMD, but remember, bashunit cannot be run from CMD, it must be executed in a Bash shell.

I recommend following the installation steps from the bashunit documentation using a WSL terminal to get it up and running.

[Chemaclass]

Additionally to what @antonio-gg-dev mentioned, here you can see that bashunit works on Windows with WSL: https://github.com/TypedDevs/bashunit/actions/runs/16769299173/job/47480673684

[jrfnl]

@antonio-gg-dev @Chemaclass Thank you both for your replies!

To use bashunit on Windows, you need to run it from a terminal that uses Bash, for example, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) or Git Bash.

The thing is, if I would run Bashunit on WSL, it would still not be testing the behaviour for Windows as that is a Linux shell, so I don't see the added value of that (the tests are already run on Linux via CI).

I don't know the fine print of Git Bash, but my default git setup already makes all bash commands distributed with git available in the Windows CMD shell, which is why I was curious when I saw that it wasn't working on CMD.

Having said that, I just tested and if I explicitly open a git bash shell, I can see things working on Windows.

As for the recursion error you're getting, it's happening because your .bat file is calling itself when trying to execute bashunit, which causes an infinite loop and eventually crashes the stack.

🤦🏻‍♀️ Oh darn... of course.

For arguments' sake, I've now renamed the downloaded file to bashunit.sh and pointed the bashunit.bat file to the bashunit.sh file.
As you already said, that still doesn't get me anywhere.

Independently of which way I try to invoke from CMD (either using bashunit.sh or bashunit[.bat], the CMD opens a new CMD window which very briefly displays an "Event not found" before closing itself again.

Just documenting this here to hopefully allow the next person to run into this to find this ticket 😉

[Chemaclass]

Thanks for the reply, and this is indeed good for other future possible similar cases :)
Was the doubt resolved and we can close now the issue? If you need any more support, let us know

[jrfnl]

@Chemaclass Your answers have unblocked me for now, but have also highlighted that we will need a secondary tool (probably PHPUnit phpt files) to safeguard the CLI interface on all supported OSes as bashunit alone won't be sufficient (but that's another matter).

So, as far as I'm concerned the issue can be closed, though I can imagine it may be a good idea to update the documentation - probably the "Installation" page - to mention that to install/run on Windows, bashunit needs to be invoked either via WSL or via the "git bash" shell.

If so, leaving the ticket open until the docs update has been made might be good ?

[antonio-gg-dev]

Right @jrfnl , Bash is the "language" of the Linux shell, Batch (bat) is the language of the Windows Shell (CMD), so you'd need something like a "cmdunit" for native support 🤣.

Git Bash is a Linux-like shell bundled with Git for Windows, which is different from just being able to run Git commands in the Windows CMD.

That said, I'm curious about what you're trying to achieve. Even if you manage to run bashunit from CMD, it would still spawn a Linux subshell, so in the end it’s the same as running it directly from a Linux shell (like WSL or Git Bash).

I'll make a note about improving the documentation, I want to run a few tests to make things as clear as possible.

[jrfnl]

@antonio-gg-dev Thanks for that additional context.

Git Bash is a Linux-like shell bundled with Git for Windows, which is different from just being able to run Git commands in the Windows CMD.

When installing Git on Windows, you actually get the choice to make the bash commands available for the Windows CMD shell as well, independently of the Git Bash shell.
I always install git that way, which is why I thought I might be able to run bashunit via CMD. I knew the chance it would work was small, but I figured it was worth a try anyway 😉

That said, I'm curious about what you're trying to achieve.

More than anything I wanted to figure out how to describe the contributing process for the bashunit end-to-end tests in the CONTRIBUTING guide for the PHP_CodeSniffer project.

We recently had an issue (PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer#1112) which was very specific to how bash creates processes, which caused an interference in the handling of parallel processing in PHP_CodeSniffer.

Fixing that bug was straight forward, safeguarding the fix via a test not so much.
That was not a situation we could test via PHPUnit (at all), which is why I suggested introducing a test to cover that situation via bashunit.
The contributor has done a great job creating a test setup with bashunit now, but the CONTRIBUTING guide still needed information about this too, which is why I was trying to run things locally to see what contributors would need to know.

This is the current text I'll be adding to the CONTRIBUTING guide:

Writing End-to-End Tests

Bash-based end-to-end tests can be written using the Bashunit test tooling.

To install bashunit, follow the installation guide.

You can then run the bashunit tests on Linux/Mac/WSL, like so:

./lib/bashunit -p tests/EndToEnd

Note: these tests will not run in the Windows native CMD shell. When on Windows, either use WSL or use the "git bash" shell.

When writing end-to-end tests, please use fixtures for the "files under scan" to make the tests stable.
These fixtures can be placed in the tests/EndToEnd/Fixtures subdirectory.

I realize that's still only a stub, but it's better than not mentioning the E2E tests in the CONTRIBUTING guide. At least now people will have something they can expand on.

I'll make a note about improving the documentation, I want to run a few tests to make things as clear as possible.

Understood. Feel free to ping me if you want me to proofread something.

[antonio-gg-dev]

Alright @jrfnl , got it. We're also working on clarifying your questions about using Bash (and bashunt) on Windows in our own documentation.

By the way, we love that you're using bashunit in PHP_CodeSniffer, is this the PR?
PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer#1126

[jrfnl]

By the way, we love that you're using bashunit in PHP_CodeSniffer, is this the PR? PHPCSStandards/PHP_CodeSniffer#1126

It is indeed. I have some tweaks locally which I will still push to that branch before merging (including the update to the CONTRIBUTING guide), but I expect the PR to be merged later this week.

[Chemaclass]

Documentation updated https://bashunit.typeddevs.com/installation#install-sh
Thanks to @CosmeValera for the PR and to @jrfnl for bringing this topic on the table!