feat: add GOOSE_SHELL env var to configure preferred shell by vincenzopalazzo · Pull Request #7909 · block/goose

vincenzopalazzo · 2026-03-15T11:33:46Z

Summary

Adds GOOSE_SHELL environment variable to let users override the default shell used for command execution
Auto-detects shell argument style (-c for POSIX shells, -Command for PowerShell, /c for cmd) based on executable name
Updates the model's system prompt to reflect which shell is active, so it generates compatible commands
PATH resolution (get_shell_path_dirs) also respects GOOSE_SHELL

Motivation

Two key pain points addressed:

Unix: Users whose $SHELL is dash/ash get bash-specific commands from the model that fail
Windows: cmd.exe is extremely limited; Cygwin/MSYS2 users want to use bash.exe directly

Usage

# Use zsh instead of default shell
export GOOSE_SHELL=/bin/zsh

# Windows: use Cygwin bash
set GOOSE_SHELL=C:\cygwin64\bin\bash.exe

Without GOOSE_SHELL set, behavior is unchanged (reads $SHELL on Unix, auto-detects PowerShell/cmd on Windows).

Test plan

cargo build succeeds
cargo test -p goose-mcp — all 182 tests pass
cargo test -p goose-server — all 11 tests pass
Manual: set GOOSE_SHELL=/bin/zsh and verify shell commands execute with zsh
Manual: unset GOOSE_SHELL and verify existing default behavior unchanged

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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crates/goose-mcp/src/developer/paths.rs

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chatgpt-codex-connector · 2026-03-15T12:18:24Z

crates/goose-mcp/src/developer/shell.rs

+        let shell_name = Path::new(shell)
+            .file_stem()
+            .and_then(|s| s.to_str())
+            .unwrap_or(shell);


Normalize preferred shell name before argument matching

The shell-type dispatch is currently case-sensitive, so on Windows a valid GOOSE_SHELL like C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\PowerShell.EXE (or CMD.EXE) produces a stem of PowerShell/CMD, misses these lowercase match arms, and falls through to the POSIX -c path; those shells do not accept -c, so shell execution fails even though the executable path is valid. Converting the extracted stem to lowercase before the match would make this robust to normal Windows path casing.

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Apply the GOOSE_SHELL feature to the current developer extension location (crates/goose/src/agents/platform_extensions/developer/shell.rs). - build_shell_command checks GOOSE_SHELL before $SHELL / /bin/bash - resolve_login_shell_path also respects GOOSE_SHELL - On Windows, lower-case the shell stem before matching so PowerShell.EXE and CMD.EXE are recognised correctly (fixes case-sensitive match bug) - POSIX-like shells on Windows (Cygwin/MSYS2 bash) use -c instead of /C Signed-off-by: Douwe Osinga <[email protected]>

DOsinga

Good feature, real pain point. The P1 (Windows PATH probing for POSIX shells) was already fixed by the author. I pushed a one-liner fix for the unaddressed P2 — case-insensitive shell name matching so PowerShell.EXE / PWSH.EXE resolve to the right args on Windows.

DOsinga

Rebased onto current main and applied the GOOSE_SHELL feature to the new developer extension location (crates/goose/src/agents/platform_extensions/developer/shell.rs) — the original target (crates/goose-mcp/src/developer/) was moved since the PR was opened. Also fixed the case-sensitive shell name matching on Windows (Codex P2: PowerShell.EXE → stem lowercased before matching so pwsh/powershell/cmd arms fire correctly). The PR's redundant doc comments were not ported.

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chatgpt-codex-connector · 2026-03-20T15:06:28Z

crates/goose/src/agents/platform_extensions/developer/shell.rs

    let mut command = {
-        let mut command = tokio::process::Command::new("cmd");
-        command.arg("/C").raw_arg(command_line);
+        let shell = std::env::var("GOOSE_SHELL").unwrap_or_else(|_| "cmd".to_string());


Treat empty GOOSE_SHELL as unset

If GOOSE_SHELL is present but empty (for example GOOSE_SHELL=), std::env::var returns Ok(""), so this code constructs Command::new("") and shell execution fails with a spawn error. Before this change, the code fell back to a working default shell (cmd on Windows, /bin/bash/$SHELL on Unix), so an empty override now causes a full regression in command execution. Filtering out empty values before using the override would preserve the intended fallback behavior.

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Signed-off-by: Douwe Osinga <[email protected]> Co-authored-by: Douwe Osinga <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: esnyder <[email protected]>

* origin/main: (62 commits) Tweak the release process: no more merge to main (#7994) fix: gemini models via databricks (#8042) feat(apps): Pass toolInfo to MCP Apps via hostContext (#7506) fix: remove configured marker when deleting oauth provider configuration (#7887) docs: add vmware-aiops MCP extension documentation (#8055) Show setup instructions for ACP providers in settings modal (#8065) deps: replace sigstore-verification with sigstore-verify to kill vulns (#8064) feat(acp): add session/set_config and stabilize list, delete and close (#7984) docs: Correct `gosoe` typo to `goose` (#8062) fix: use default provider and model when provider in session no longer exists (#8035) feat: add GOOSE_SHELL env var to configure preferred shell (#7909) fix(desktop): fullscreen header bar + always-visible close controls (#8033) docs: add Claude Code approve mode permission routing documentation (#7949) chatgpt_codex: Support reasoning and gpt-5.4 (#7941) refactor(anthropic): fix N+1 thinking message storage issue (#7958) fix: handle mid-stream error events in OpenAI SSE streaming (#8031) Fix apps extension: coerce string arguments from inner LLM responses (#8030) feat: ability to expand sidebar to see chats names (#7816) Fix config for GOOSE_MAX_BACKGROUND_TASKS (#7940) set MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=12.0 (#7947) ...

…pstream * wpfleger/socket-support: (62 commits) Tweak the release process: no more merge to main (#7994) fix: gemini models via databricks (#8042) feat(apps): Pass toolInfo to MCP Apps via hostContext (#7506) fix: remove configured marker when deleting oauth provider configuration (#7887) docs: add vmware-aiops MCP extension documentation (#8055) Show setup instructions for ACP providers in settings modal (#8065) deps: replace sigstore-verification with sigstore-verify to kill vulns (#8064) feat(acp): add session/set_config and stabilize list, delete and close (#7984) docs: Correct `gosoe` typo to `goose` (#8062) fix: use default provider and model when provider in session no longer exists (#8035) feat: add GOOSE_SHELL env var to configure preferred shell (#7909) fix(desktop): fullscreen header bar + always-visible close controls (#8033) docs: add Claude Code approve mode permission routing documentation (#7949) chatgpt_codex: Support reasoning and gpt-5.4 (#7941) refactor(anthropic): fix N+1 thinking message storage issue (#7958) fix: handle mid-stream error events in OpenAI SSE streaming (#8031) Fix apps extension: coerce string arguments from inner LLM responses (#8030) feat: ability to expand sidebar to see chats names (#7816) Fix config for GOOSE_MAX_BACKGROUND_TASKS (#7940) set MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=12.0 (#7947) ...

* main: (37 commits) fix: handle reasoning content blocks in OpenAI-compat streaming parser (#8078) chore(acp): build native packages on latest mac (#8075) Display delegate sub agents logs in UI (#7519) Update tar version to avoid CVE-2026-33056 (#8073) refactor: consolidate duplicated dependencies into workspace (#8041) tui: set up for publishing via github actions (#8020) feat: feature-gate local inference dependencies (#7976) feat: ability to manage sub recipes in desktop ui (#6360) Tweak the release process: no more merge to main (#7994) fix: gemini models via databricks (#8042) feat(apps): Pass toolInfo to MCP Apps via hostContext (#7506) fix: remove configured marker when deleting oauth provider configuration (#7887) docs: add vmware-aiops MCP extension documentation (#8055) Show setup instructions for ACP providers in settings modal (#8065) deps: replace sigstore-verification with sigstore-verify to kill vulns (#8064) feat(acp): add session/set_config and stabilize list, delete and close (#7984) docs: Correct `gosoe` typo to `goose` (#8062) fix: use default provider and model when provider in session no longer exists (#8035) feat: add GOOSE_SHELL env var to configure preferred shell (#7909) fix(desktop): fullscreen header bar + always-visible close controls (#8033) ...

vincenzopalazzo force-pushed the claude/musing-banach branch from 87b17dc to bf7258a Compare March 15, 2026 11:36

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crates/goose-mcp/src/developer/paths.rs Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

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DOsinga approved these changes Mar 20, 2026

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DOsinga force-pushed the claude/musing-banach branch from 049262c to 9af6ef6 Compare March 20, 2026 15:03

DOsinga approved these changes Mar 20, 2026

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DOsinga added this pull request to the merge queue Mar 20, 2026

Merged via the queue into block:main with commit 1f7f234 Mar 20, 2026
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vincenzopalazzo deleted the claude/musing-banach branch March 20, 2026 20:58

cloorc mentioned this pull request Mar 21, 2026

Cherry-pick latest 13 commits from main branch - CLI related LeafAI/Leaf#6

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github-actions bot mentioned this pull request Mar 24, 2026

chore(release): release version 1.29.0 #8089

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feat: add GOOSE_SHELL env var to configure preferred shell#7909

feat: add GOOSE_SHELL env var to configure preferred shell#7909
DOsinga merged 1 commit intoblock:mainfrom
vincenzopalazzo:claude/musing-banach

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vincenzopalazzo commented Mar 15, 2026

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