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🐛 fix(bash): escape the prompt for every PS1 state - #3466
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The bash activator stored --prompt raw when promptvars was off at
activation. Turning promptvars on, entering posix mode, or exporting
PS1 to a child bash later expanded the value, so $(...) ran.
Escape each character for both of bash's prompt passes, whatever the
state is at activation. The loop builds the escapes by concatenation,
one character at a time: the replacement in ${var//pat/rep} goes through a
different quote-removal path for BASH_COMPAT 42 and older and for
patsub_replacement on or off (parameter_brace_patsub in subst.c), so
its backslash count depends on the bash version and options.
zsh draws the prompt from psvar[9] instead of an escaped PS1 literal.
zsh inserts psvar entries as data under every prompt option, and an
exported PS1 holds %9v rather than shell syntax. deactivate restores
the slot.
GHSA-cx6f-vjhg-g3cc
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A shell can change how it reads the stored prompt after activation: promptvars and posix mode in bash, PROMPT_SUBST in zsh, histchars in tcsh, delayed expansion in cmd.exe, or a child shell that inherits the prompt. tests/prompt_matrix.py lists those states and actions per shell with one injection corpus and one driver, and a single matrix test checks every activator against it: no payload runs, and the prompt shows the way that shell's display rule says. The matrix renders each activation script in process instead of creating an environment per prompt, since the script depends only on the prompt; creating them pushed slower interpreters past the per-test timeout. It carries the slow mark like the other real-shell activation tests, so the graalpy and RustPython jobs skip it as they skip those. Install zsh and dash in CI so their cases run there.
Generate prompts from the tokens each shell reads as syntax, and run each one through every prompt state and later action of that shell with the shared matrix driver. Each example builds the activator in process, so the search exercises quoting without a launch per example, and per-shell seeds replay the known bypass shapes first. Hypothesis rather than Atheris: coverage guidance adds nothing when the system under test is a subprocess, and the property env runs on Windows, where batch and PowerShell 5.1 live. The check job installs tcsh, zsh, fish and nushell for that env on Linux; xonsh comes from the property dependency group.
creator.py and pip_invoke.py opened the .venv redirect and the wheel RECORD with a plain write, which follows a link planted after the existence check. Both now go through write_file, which unlinks the old entry and creates the new one with O_EXCL. Windows refuses to unlink a read-only file, so write_file clears the attribute with the clear_readonly helper safe_delete uses. write_file now replaces a read-only redirect that points at a virtualenv on every platform, where the plain write warned and left it.
Two queries matched code that no longer exists. UnquotedActivationValue sank on str.replace inside instantiate_template, which the single-pass substitution replaced, and MultilinePyvenvCfgValue sank on write_text, which PyEnvCfg.write no longer calls. Both passed their fixtures while reporting nothing on the tree. Sink the substitution values on the iteration variable used outside a quote() call, and sink write_file's data argument. Fixtures now mirror the current shapes, with a positive and a negative class each.
Add four queries for code shapes from the October advisories: an in-place write that follows a link, chmod inside an rmtree error handler, a Python or xonsh quote that uses repr() instead of ascii(), and a ScriptMaker that builds its shebang without shell_shebang(). Each ships with a fixture that has one positive and one negative case, so the query test fails if the query stops matching that shape. The in-place write query allows the app-data cache and the three wheel image modules (base, copy, symlink). Those write into virtualenv's own app-data cache, not into the environment being created, so this query does not cover them.
packages.microsoft.com answered apt-get update with 403 and an unsigned InRelease on one runner, which failed the job before any test ran. No job installs from that repository, so the steps remove its sources before updating.
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GitHub Actions now runs a group of steps concurrently with parallel (https://github.blog/changelog/2026-06-25-actions-steps-can-now-be-run-in-parallel/). The test and check jobs install tox, Python, RustPython and the shells at the same time and start tox once all of them finish. Each platform's shells stay in one step, because apt and brew each hold a global lock that makes concurrent installs wait or fail.
Nushell and fish came from apt and brew, which hold a global lock, so they waited behind the other packages in one step per platform. They now download from their pinned GitHub release assets with a sha256 check, as RustPython and the Windows Nushell build already did, and each runs as its own parallel step. The fish PPA and the fury.io Nushell repository, two more apt sources that could fail apt-get update, are gone.
setup-python finds GraalPy by listing the GitHub releases of oracle/graalpython, and that REST listing now often returns an empty page with status 200, so GraalPy jobs failed with "No release was found in GraalPy version.json" or hung until the job timeout. uv installs every interpreter in the matrix from the download list built into uv, as the 3.15 jobs already did, so the tests no longer depend on that listing and the GraalPy pin goes away.
The artifact client retries HTTP errors but rethrows ETIMEDOUT, ECONNRESET and the other network error codes on the first attempt, so one dropped connection to the artifact service failed a job whose tests had passed.
The stdlib venv module run from inside a virtualenv on Python 3.10 and older records the virtualenv's bin directory as home, so the new interpreter finds its standard library only through the prefix compiled into the base build. That prefix exists for the setup-python builds but not for the uv-managed ones, which report /install, so the bare interpreter died with "No module named 'encodings'". virtualenv points the environment at the base interpreter.
uv prefers an installed interpreter over a download, and the macOS runners ship Apple's Python 3.9, so the 3.9 jobs tested that build instead of a CPython 3.9 release. The Homebrew legs keep the default because they pass Homebrew's interpreter through UV_PYTHON.
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The Windows runner image sets PSModuleAnalysisCachePath to a prebuilt module analysis cache. tox dropped it, so each Windows PowerShell 5.1 launch inside the test session rescanned every module on the image: about 18 seconds per launch against 0.3 with the cache, and one test ran past the 120 second per-test timeout.
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importlib writes bytecode to a temporary file named after id(path) and renames it into place. GraalPy hands out the same id() values in every process, so shards importing a module for the first time pick the same temporary name: one shard's cleanup deletes another's file mid-write and a third rewrites it, which can publish a truncated cache file. A shard then crashed with an EOFException while loading unittest. compileall gives each file to a single worker, so compiling the standard library and site-packages once before the shards start leaves them nothing to write in the trees they share.
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No test uses snap since Nushell installs from its release asset, and the runner image already ships snapd, so the install only upgraded it: a 33 MB download that took 13 minutes from a slow mirror and ran a GraalPy job into its timeout.
make_zipapp fetched each locked wheel with one urlopen call, so a single TLS EOF from the index failed the zipapp check. The download now retries connection errors, timeouts and 5xx responses twice with a short backoff; a 4xx response still fails at once, and the sha256 check is unchanged.
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…heck With every file in the environment read-only, re-seeding still failed in _uninstall_dist, which removed the old pip-3.14.exe with a bare unlink. It now goes through remove_file like the creator does. The hard-link check in remove_file is gone. safe_delete and pypa#3466 clear the attribute through hard links, so the check only made copy() of a file behave differently from copy() of a folder.
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Fixes GHSA-cx6f-vjhg-g3cc, reported by @rozzkml: an environment prompt taken from project metadata could run commands in the user's shell once a shell option changed after activation.
A
--promptvalue, or an environment directory name, becomes part of the shell prompt. In bash the activator stored it raw wheneverpromptvarswas off at activation, andshopt -s promptvars,set -o posixor a child bash that inherits an exportedPS1later expanded it, so a value such asx$(id > /tmp/pwned)yran on the next prompt redraw. 21.14.9 introduced this when it made the escaping depend on the state at activation.flowchart LR Meta["Project metadata<br/>or directory name"] --> Prompt["--prompt value"] Prompt --> Activate["source bin/activate"] Activate --> Later{"Later in the session:<br/>promptvars on, posix mode,<br/>child shell"} Later -- "21.14.9 to 21.14.12" --> Run["Prompt redraw runs $(...)"] Later -- "this PR" --> Text["Prompt shows the text"] classDef input fill:#cfe4ff,stroke:#1f6feb,color:#0b1f3a; classDef bad fill:#ffd7d5,stroke:#cf222e,color:#3a0b0b; classDef good fill:#d3f5dc,stroke:#1a7f37,color:#0b2e16; class Meta,Prompt,Activate,Later input; class Run bad; class Text good;The prompt now stays text under every option a user can toggle afterwards. Bash gets the value escaped for both of its prompt passes, built one character at a time, because the
${var//pat/rep}replacement it used before strips backslashes differently across bash versions,BASH_COMPATlevels andpatsub_replacement; the result behaves the same on bash 3.2 through 5.3, including macOS/bin/bash. zsh reads the prompt frompsvar, which it never parses as shell syntax. Users who keeppromptvarsoff see a backslash doubled and a backtick with a leading backslash, the one display cost no escaping can avoid while staying safe when the option turns on.The tests hold every activator to the same check, so a shell that regresses fails the same test bash would:
flowchart LR Corpus["Injection corpus<br/>known bypass shapes"] --> Matrix States["Shell state at activation<br/>promptvars, posix, BASH_COMPAT,<br/>PROMPT_SUBST, delayed expansion"] --> Matrix Actions["Later action<br/>toggle an option, child shell"] --> Matrix Matrix["One matrix test for bash, zsh,<br/>fish, tcsh, nushell, PowerShell,<br/>xonsh and cmd.exe"] --> Check["No command ran<br/>and the prompt shows as documented"] Fuzz["Hypothesis prompts per shell"] --> Check classDef input fill:#cfe4ff,stroke:#1f6feb,color:#0b1f3a; classDef test fill:#ffe3a3,stroke:#d29200,color:#3a2c00; classDef good fill:#d3f5dc,stroke:#1a7f37,color:#0b2e16; class Corpus,States,Actions input; class Matrix,Fuzz test; class Check good;Reviewing the other activators found no other way for a prompt to run commands; fish, nushell, PowerShell, cmd.exe, xonsh and the Python activator keep it as data.
The PR also hardens two writes. virtualenv now writes the
.venvredirect and the wheelRECORDwith exclusive create, so a link planted between the existence check and the write cannot redirect it; virtualenv also replaces a read-only redirect that already points at a virtualenv, which used to stay with a warning. On the scanning side, two custom CodeQL queries had stopped matching the code they were written for while their own tests stayed green; this PR re-anchors both, and four new queries cover the other advisories from October. #3464 tracks the remaining CodeQL and CI follow-ups.The CI changes let the check workflow pass without reruns. setup-uv now installs every test interpreter: setup-python finds GraalPy through the GitHub releases listing of
oracle/graalpython, which often returns an empty page, and uv's default preference had the macOS 3.9 jobs testing Apple's Python instead of a CPython release. tox passesPSModuleAnalysisCachePaththrough, because without the prebuilt cache the runner image points at, every Windows PowerShell 5.1 launch rescanned all installed modules (about 18 seconds each) and pushed tests past their timeout. The GraalPy runner compiles the standard library and site-packages before starting its shards, since GraalPy repeatsid()values across processes and concurrent bytecode writes picked the same temporary file. Nushell, fish and RustPython install from pinned, hash-checked release assets, each in its own parallel setup step.