Committing after latest update (2.5.7) results in cryptic error from embedded git

Describe the bug

After updating to version 2.5.7, when committing a change, the embedded git throws a cryptic looking error (screenshot below).

When removing the unprintable characters, it reads:

Windows Subsystem for Linux has no installed distributions.


Distributions can be installed by visiting the Microsoft Store:


https://aka.ms/wslstore

Version & OS

Github Desktop 2.5.7 Windows 10 Pro version 2004 (No WSL)

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Attempt to commit a change

Expected behavior

Change is committed

Actual behavior

Error is thrown by embedded git, which bubbles up to error modal (see logs & screenshot).

Screenshots

Logs

Logs are attached (with personal info redacted) showing the actual output of the message:

2020-11-12.desktop.production_redacted.log

Additional context

After stepping through the code using the developer tools (in Github Desktop), I discovered that the env var LOCAL_GIT_DIRECTORY can be used to bypass the embedded git. After setting it to the directory of a local git bash installation I was able to commit without an issue.

Fetching/pulling seems fine, even with embedded git (not sure about pushing), but committing fails 100% of the time now (unless the env var mentioned above is set).

I had no issue prior to version 2.5.7.

EDIT: See this comment for the latest information; it appears to be a local PATH issue (unsurprisingly).

[steveward]

@aphix thanks for sharing your debugging steps! I’m glad to hear you were able to get things resolved.

[aphix]

Ah! The plot thickens – so tried a few different local repos to make sure it happened in all cases, but I got one to work, and it appears the difference is that I have a pre-commit hook (which was working previously with the app, passing any errors as expected in the modal).

Interestingly, using the #!/bin/bash shebang results in the error above (again, was working before), whereas using #!/bin/sh appears to be working as expected (the message echoed from the script is in the error modal.

Screenshots:

using #!/bin/sh

using #!/bin/bash

Follow up: This occurs with an empty script (using bash shebang), so it’s not an exit code thing: