Git Bash Error - Cannot read property 'substring'

[johnpittman]

Seems to run on Windows cmd but not Git Bash which sucks because Git Bash is the only sane thing to use on Windows. I had to download ConEmu and use Git Bash from there but now I get a prompt when closing console windows that can't be disabled even though the check-box is unchecked to not confirm. Also somethin'. Nice module.

C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator.js\node_modules\inquirer\no de_modules\rx-lite\rx.lite.js:549
throw e;
^
TypeError: Cannot read property 'substring' of undefined
at Interface.rl._getCursorPos (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-ge nerator.js\node_modules\inquirer\node_modules\readline2\index.js:55:51)
at ScreenManager.render (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generato r.js\node_modules\inquirer\lib\utils\screen-manager.js:19:27)
at Prompt.render (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator.js\no de_modules\inquirer\lib\prompts\input.js:75:15)
at Prompt.run (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator.js\node modules\inquirer\lib\prompts\input.js:49:8)
at Prompt.run (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator.js\node modules\inquirer\lib\prompts\base.js:57:8)
at Object. (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator. js\node_modules\inquirer\lib\ui\prompt.js:83:12)
at module.exports (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator.js\n ode_modules\inquirer\node_modules\run-async\index.js:15:21)
at C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator.js\node_modules\inqu irer\lib\utils\utils.js:16:7
at tryCatcher (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator.js\node modules\inquirer\node_modules\rx-lite\rx.lite.js:537:29)
at setDisposable (C:\Users\Admin\Development\Working\package-generator.js\no de_modules\inquirer\node_modules\rx-lite\rx.lite.js:5380:36)

[SBoudrias]

Git Bash is the only sane thing to use on Windows

FWIW, Powershell2 is a good console for Windows environment. If you want more control on the look, wrap it inside Console2. - That was my setup a couple years ago when I was working on ASP projects.

For the bug itself, someone or me is going to take a look eventually. But I don't have a windows machine handy currently, and it's not exactly at the top of my OSS todo list. - If you feel like debugging this one, please do! :)

[mradionov]

Have the same issue. The problem is that readline does not consider Git Bash a tty, this.terminal option of the readline instance is being set to false internally, and as I can understand inquirer won't work without tty.

$ node -p -e "Boolean(process.stdout.isTTY)"
false

Git Bash is based on mintty. From mintty docs:

LIMITATIONS

Console issue

Mintty is not a full replacement for the Windows console window that Cygwin uses by default. Like xterm and rxvt, mintty communicates with the child process through a pseudo terminal device, which Cygwin emulates using Windows pipes. This means that native Windows command line programs started in mintty see a pipe rather than a console device. As a consequence, such programs often disable interactive input. Also, direct calls to low-level Win32 console functions will fail. Programs that access the console as a file should be fine though.

See also: nodejs/node-v0.x-archive#6459

That's caused by cygwin's terminal emulation, it's incompatible with node. Closing as WONTFIX. If you feel really strongly about it, you could try your hand at a libuv patch.

Note that you can still use node with cygwin, just not in the mintty terminal.

From my research I do not think that it would be possible to fix it, but I am not competent in this question, maybe @SBoudrias has some ideas. If this is actually unfixable, than the solution would be (for me at least) to check if the process supports tty and respond with a user-friendly error message (maybe it can even be built into inquirer, if it strictly requires tty, I'm not sure).

Some related stuff:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10043177/node-js-cygwin-not-supported
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17297422/trouble-with-starting-node-js-from-a-cygwin-console

[pumbers]

Getting the same problem on Babun ... also mintty based I believe.

[c0b41]

Any update this issue?

[matthewp]

@ayhankuru What about this comment is not clear enough? #272 (comment)

[c0b41]

@matthewp sorry, ı'm checkout that comment

[SBoudrias]

FWIW, that's the issue on Node side tracking the issue you're having nodejs/node#3006

Node always had issue with fake windows command lines. Not sure what their plan is for eventually fixing.

[Danita]

Puzzlingly enough, I executed node -p -e "Boolean(process.stdout.isTTY)" on my machine but it returned true. My specs:

• Windows 7 x64
• Gitbash (which comes with Git for Windows, Mintty ver 2.0.3 x86)
• Node v5.5.0

I'm here trying to find info to debug this package which depends on Inquirer, and it's failing on said configuration.

[doxxx]

I ran across a similar issue and found it worked when running node using winpty in Cygwin's mintty console with the fish shell.

Edit: I fail at linking.

[SBoudrias]

Please try the latest inquirer version and let me know if that's still an issue.

A lot of work have been done on the Node.js side, and I remove all Inquirer custom readline handling as the Node version is now good enough.

[tiagonapoli]

When running a .js in git bash, say 'index.js', I got these results:

• If running using shebang #!/usr/bin/env node, process.stdout.isTTY is undefined.
• If running using node index.js, process.stdout.isTTY is true