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I've installed mill on arch linux with fish as my default shell. Since the file /usr/bin/mill doesn't start with a shebang, fish won't execute the file. Instead it responds with

$ mill
Failed to execute process '/usr/bin/mill'. Reason:
exec: Exec format error
The file '/usr/bin/mill' is marked as an executable but could not be run by the operating system.

I can execute mill with bash -c 'mill' but I don't want to be doing that all the time. Nor do I want to add that as an alias just for mill. Is it possible to configure fish to always use sh or bash when there isn't a shebang in the script instead of failing? Or maybe there is an operating system level problem?

edit: Mill is just an example. I've encountered this feature of fish numerous times with different scripts that I shouldn't be editing. That's why I'm looking for a way to forever avoid the feature not a one off fix for just mill.

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  • It seems to me that the author of the mill software should add an appropriate sh-bang line to it. Initial appearances are that it tries to be a polyglot script, and clearly doesn't support fish. Commented Jul 3, 2019 at 17:26
  • Relating: unix.stackexchange.com/q/491419/117549 Commented Jul 3, 2019 at 17:27
  • Why don't you want to add an alias? That's exactly what they're for. Commented Jul 3, 2019 at 17:40
  • @glennjackman I've encountered this feature of fish multiple times with files I shouldn't be editing. I don't want to add an alias for every one. I want a permament solution. Commented Jul 3, 2019 at 18:59
  • It's not onerous: alias mill 'bash /usr/bin/mill'; funcsave mill is all it takes. Commented Jul 3, 2019 at 19:25

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You can't do that.

You can check its source code:

        execve(actual_cmd, argv, envv);
        err = errno;

        // Something went wrong with execve, check for a ":", and run /bin/sh if encountered. This is a
        // weird predecessor to the shebang that is still sometimes used since it is supported on
        // Windows. OK to not use CLO_EXEC here because this is called after fork and the file is
        // immediately closed.

Notice how its using execve (not execvp or execlp, which have a fall-back to /bin/sh path in case of ENOEXEC) and it will only run the script with /bin/sh if it starts with : (itself quite a dubious feature; especially since fish will also use it in the case of errors other than ENOEXEC).

But if you can edit the script to add a : at the beginning, you can just as well edit it to add a proper she-bang.

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