Windows bash shells: How to robustly identify which flavor is running

Question

I operate in an environment that uses both git-bash and cygwin bash. There are probably other flavors as well. What is the easiest way to robustly identify which bash flavor is running?

IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: There are a lot of non-trivial ways to do this; there are a lot of ways to make potential solutions fail.

Here's how one developer does this: Update the .bashrc by adding an environment variable. In scripts, check the value of the environment variable. Pro: easy. Con: This requires the modification of 2 .bashrc files.

We're here to help you fix code that isn't working. We'll need to see samples and error messages. Please update your Q with your best attempt to solve your problem. Good lulck.\ — shellter, May 01 '20 at 14:27
Why does it matter? What will you do differently in one bash versus the other? — glenn jackman, May 01 '20 at 15:07

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 01 '20 at 15:26

1

uname -s should be enough:

Git for Windows bash:
```
MINGW64_NT-10.0-18363
```
Cygwin bash (as illustrated here)
```
CYGWIN_NT-5.1
```

answered May 01 '20 at 15:26

VonC

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Added pro: version numbers! I doubt it can get much simpler than that! Thanks. I'm curious if this works with other Windows bash shell flavors. – Richard Jessop May 01 '20 at 15:29
1

@RichardJessop You can see an example for mintty: https://github.com/mintty/mintty/issues/885 – VonC May 01 '20 at 15:38
Thanks for the link. It contains information that other script developers will find useful if they need additional environment attributes. – Richard Jessop May 01 '20 at 15:41
1

With WSL bash, output is `Linux` – glenn jackman May 01 '20 at 16:27

Windows bash shells: How to robustly identify which flavor is running

1 Answers1