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/usr/bin/start shell script should be replaced with a native windows executable

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
30/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
shell
Domain
cli, operating-systems, tooling

Research direction

Start by reading /usr/bin/start and the issue's description of MSYS2_ARG_CONV_EXCL, then verify how //c and user arguments are converted. Done means a native Windows executable accepts the arguments, preserves the intended path conversion behavior, invokes cmd /c start, and no longer breaks git help when exclusion is set.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

/usr/bin/start has this line:

cmd //c start "${@//&/^&}"

The double slash prevents conversion of /c into C:\, instead it's converted to /c with a single slash. I couldn't find this info at https://www.msys2.org/docs/filesystem-paths/ though.

I expect that this tool will accept the command line arguments, perform the needed path conversions and launch cmd /c start ...

However, MSYS2_ARG_CONV_EXCL=* or MSYS2_ARG_CONV_EXCL=// affect both the actual arguments and //c. This variable should only affect the actual arguments and I see only one way to do that: replace the script with a native windows executable. Then MSYS2 will pass some command line to that executable with already converted paths and it can run cmd /c without a problem.

I personally do export MSYS2_ARG_CONV_EXCL='*' in my "git for windows" installation and this breaks git help: starts an interactive cmd prompt instead of launching the browser.

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