commit-link" data-hovercard-type="commit" data-hovercard-url="https://github.com/EliahKagan/GitPython/commit/881456bdceb61d51fa84ea286e6ca0e3587e8dc5/hovercard" href="https://github.com/EliahKagan/GitPython/commit/881456bdceb61d51fa84ea286e6ca0e3587e8dc5">881456b (gitpython-developers#1679) expanded the use of shutil.which in test_index.py to attempt to mark test_commit_msg_hook_success xfail when bash.exe is a WSL bash wrapper in System32 (because that test currently is not passing when the hook is run via bash in a WSL system, which the WSL bash.exe wraps). But this was not reliable, due to significant differences between shell and non-shell search behavior for executable commands on Windows. As the new docstring notes, lookup due to Popen generally checks System32 before going through directories in PATH, as this is how CreateProcessW behaves. - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/processthreadsapi/nf-processthreadsapi-createprocessw - python/cpython#91558 (comment) The technique I had used in 881456b also had the shortcoming of assuming that a bash.exe in System32 was the WSL wrapper. But such a file may exist on some systems without WSL, and be a bash interpreter unrelated to WSL that may be able to run hooks. In addition, one common situation, which was the case on CI before a step to install a WSL distribution was added, is that WSL is present but no WSL distributions are installed. In that situation bash.exe is found in System32, but it can't be used to run any hooks, because there's no actual system with a bash in it to wrap. This was not covered before. Unlike some conditions that prevent a WSL system from being used, such as resource exhaustion blocking it from being started, the absence of a WSL system should probably not fail the pytest run, for the same reason as we are trying not to have the complete *absence* of bash.exe fail the pytest run. Both conditions should be xfail. Fortunately, the error message when no distribution exists is distinctive and can be checked for. There is probably no correct and reasonable way to check LBYL-style which executable file bash.exe resolves to by using shutil.which, due to shutil.which and subprocess.Popen's differing seach orders and other subtleties. So this adds code to do it EAFP-style using subprocess.run (which itself uses Popen, so giving the same CreateProcessW behavior). It tries to run a command with bash.exe whose output pretty reliably shows if the system is WSL or not. We may fail to get to the point of running that command at all, if bash.exe is not usable, in which case the failure's details tell us if bash.exe is absent (xfail), present as the WSL wrapper with no WSL systems (xfail), or has some other error (not xfail, so the user can become aware of and proably fix the problem). If we do get to that point, then a file that is almost always present on both WSL 1 and WSL 2 systems and almost always absent on any other system is checked for, to distinguish whether the working bash shell operates in a WSL system, or outside any such system as e.g. Git Bash does. See https://superuser.com/a/1749811 on various techniques for checking for WSL, including the /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/WSLInterop technique used here (which seems overall may be the most reliable). Although the Windows CI runners have Git Bash, and this is even the bash.exe that appears first in PATH (giving rise to the problem with shutil.which detailed above), it would be a bit awkward to test the behavior when Git Bash is actually used to run hooks on CI, because of how Popen selects the System32 bash.exe first, whether or not any WSL distribution is present. However, local testing shows that when Git Bash's bash.exe is selected, all four hook tests in the module pass, both before and after this change, and furthermore that bash.exe is correctly detected as "native", continuing to avoid an erroneous xfail mark in that case.