Scripts: Stop using shebangs to prevent issues with Windows environments

[gziolo]

What problem does this address?

Related issue: #32258.

Related comment in #31279 (comment) by @mcsf:

As much as I love shebangs, AFAIK they just don't work well or at all with Windows. This just emerged in #32329. I'm wondering if we should/could forbid it with our linter — wdyt?

On Windows when running a script that uses shebangs you will encounter the following error message:

'.' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

What is your proposed solution?

Related comment by @mcsf in #31279 (comment):

The alternative would be to just not have any shebang, meaning that scripts would just have code:

1. /**
2.  * External dependencies
3.  */
4. const builder = ...;

This would make it impossible for anyone in a UNIX system to invoke ./index.js (they would have to explicitly call the interpreter with node index.js), thus eliminating the possibility of merging something that would break in Windows.

The task is to find all scripts that use shebang like:

gutenberg/bin/plugin/cli.js

Line 1 in 8bc2494

#!/usr/bin/env node

and check if they work correctly with Windows. Some might work like:

gutenberg/packages/create-block/index.js

Line 1 in 8bc2494

#!/usr/bin/env node

because they are linked in the bin folder in node_modules:

gutenberg/packages/create-block/package.json

Lines 30 to 32 in 8bc2494

	"bin": {
	"wp-create-block": "./index.js"
	},

@mcsf, how do we decide? 😄

[mcsf]

Hm, I wasn't aware of the special treatment of scripts linked via the bin property in package.json. The docs even stress:

Please make sure that your file(s) referenced in bin starts with #!/usr/bin/env node, otherwise the scripts are started without the node executable!

Which leads me to think that Node must do some special dance in Windows runtimes in order to handle these well.

In that case, I withdraw my recommendation to remove shebangs. I think trying to discern good shebangs from bad ones will be difficult, and with little payoff. If any other reports from Windows users come our way, we'll patch those issues ad hoc.

If you agree, you can close this issue. In that case, I'm sorry to have wasted your time with this, @gziolo. :)

[gziolo]

Interesting learning about the recommendation for package.json setup related to scripts linked via bin 👍🏻