Looking at this: https://github.com/PrefectHQ/prefect/issues/3375 I'm trying to get ShellTask to run powershell. I have the powershell executable on the path in the machine, as "pwsh".

run_in_pwsh = ShellTask(name="Powershell run", shell="pwsh")

this is what I was trying to run. Then within the flow I had:

run_in_pwsh(command='ls')

The documentation for the shell argument says 'shell to run the command with; defaults to "bash"'. I assumed it would accept whatever as long as that kicked off in the terminal correctly? What I'm actually trying to do is run an azure command line utility called 'azcopy' (which is not part of the generic az cli). I need to do it both on a windows machine and a linux machine. Having separate scripts is fine. Any thoughts for how I could/should do this on windows?

We only support bash on Windows from this closed issue

Gotcha, and for my case of running another command line executable would this be the recommended way of doing it?

Yes it would still be the shell task as long as that tool is installed in your execution environment

@Kevin Kho Hey I'm still running into issues after following along https://github.com/PrefectHQ/prefect/pull/4397 and https://github.com/PrefectHQ/prefect/issues/4393 I have wsl2, and I have C:\Windows\System32 where the bash.exe is added both to user and system paths. I've tried this:

winshell = ShellTask(shell=True)
with Flow("ShellAzCopy") as flow:
    winshell(command='ls')
flow.run()

and

winshell = ShellTask(shell=r"C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe")
with Flow("ShellAzCopy") as flow:
    winshell(command='ls')
flow.run()

That sounds right to me. What is your error?

Just did now also error. When shell=True I get this: [2022-01-14 102411-0800] INFO - prefect.TaskRunner | Task 'ShellTask': Starting task run... [2022-01-14 102411-0800] ERROR - prefect.TaskRunner | Task 'ShellTask': Exception encountered during task execution! Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Users\ykadmin081021\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\prefect\engine\task_runner.py", line 876, in get_task_run_state value = prefect.utilities.executors.run_task_with_timeout( File "C:\Users\ykadmin081021\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\prefect\utilities\executors.py", line 454, in run_task_with_timeout return task.run(*args, **kwargs) # type: ignore File "C:\Users\ykadmin081021\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\prefect\utilities\tasks.py", line 456, in method return run_method(self, *args, **kwargs) File "C:\Users\ykadmin081021\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\prefect\tasks\shell.py", line 133, in run with Popen( File "C:\Users\ykadmin081021\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\subprocess.py", line 951, in init self._execute_child(args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds, File "C:\Users\ykadmin081021\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\subprocess.py", line 1360, in _execute_child args = list2cmdline(args) File "C:\Users\ykadmin081021\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\subprocess.py", line 565, in list2cmdline for arg in map(os.fsdecode, seq): File "C:\Users\ykadmin081021\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\os.py", line 822, in fsdecode filename = fspath(filename) # Does type-checking of

filename

. TypeError: expected str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not bool

I honestly don’t know cuz I dont use Windows

Is it worth re-opening? The fix doesn't behave the way the fix suggests it should

Let me ping Michael and see his thoughts, but response might be delayd

Exit code 127 is an executable not found error, so it looks like it’s failing to find the shell.

>> sys.platform

'linux'

That may mean that it ran the shell correctly but the command failed

the command I'm running is "ls", bash is installed by default when you install wsl

What if your command is an empty string

""

Still exit code 1, here's the whole flow+task:

winshell = ShellTask(shell="")
with Flow("ShellAzCopy") as flow:
    winshell(command='ls')
flow.run()

command=“”, not shell

This gives me 127:

winshell = ShellTask(shell="bash")
with Flow("ShellAzCopy") as flow:
    winshell(command='')
flow.run()

You don’t need to use add task inside the Flow and bind btw