[BUG] Probably does not work with WSL2

[igoradamenko]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

npm repo pkg fails.

Expected Behavior

npm repo pkg should open a browser page with pkg repo.

Steps To Reproduce

$ npm repo axios
npm ERR! Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'stdin')

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/ai/.npm/_logs/2023-04-09T13_02_08_591Z-debug-0.log

Environment

• npm: 9.5.0
• Node: 18.15.0
• OS: Ubuntu 20.04
• platform: WSL2

[igoradamenko]

Issue template does not have a field for a comment, so here it is.

I moved from npm v6 to npm v9.5.0. npm v6 uses opener, it works fine. npm v9.5.0 uses this package and it looks like this package runs different command, even though it detects that I'm using WSL.

I am not quite sure that it is a bug in the package. Maybe I'm using not supported version of WSL or something. But here what was going on with opener:

1. npm run opener with a proper URL and command/browser set to null.
2. opener wrongly detected that I was using Linux and picked xdg-open as a command to run.
3. The final command looked like xdg-open https://github.com/axios/axios. The command worked.

WSL detection was wrong in opener because my os.release() looks like this: '4.19.128-microsoft-standard+'. It does not contain Microsoft due to case of that string. However, I have xdg-open, so everything worked.

But now:

1. npm runs promise-spawn with a proper URL and command set to null.
2. promise-spawn detects that I'm using WSL
3. Hence there is no command promise-spawn sets shell as process.env.ComSpec which is undefined on my setup.
4. And it sets the command as start "".
5. Finally it spawns the process with this arguments:

   command: undefined 
   realArgs: [ '-c', 'start "" https://github.com/axios/axios' ] 
   options: { command: null, shell: false }
   extra: {}
   

The process fails because there is no shell and command.

I've found a way to run npm repo by setting ComSpec env to force the script to use cmd.exe, but:

Tbh, I do not understand why it works with way, because as debugging shows the command it generates looks like this:

cmd.exe /d /s /c start "" https://github.com/axios/axios

When I start this command manually, it works:

$ cmd.exe /d /s /c start "" https://github.com/axios/axios
'\\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\home\ai\funbox\frontend-build-scripts'
CMD.EXE was started with the above path as the current directory.
UNC paths are not supported.  Defaulting to Windows directory.

A bit noisy, but it opens the browser.

[cg2916]

Bumping as this means that npm login fails for this reason on Node 18 on WSL. You need to specify npm login --auth-type=legacy to avoid this issue.

It looks like npm/cli#6636 is the same issue.