claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix Bash tool on Windows Git Bash cannot find common binaries (git, task, ls) after 2.1.x update [1 participants]

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 (10.0.26200)
• Shell: Git Bash (bash from C:\Program Files\Git)
• Claude Code version: reproduces on latest 2.1.x at time of filing
• Regression: Yes — worked ~2 days ago, broke after a recent update

Symptoms

Inside Claude Code's Bash tool, common binaries are not resolvable on the PATH, even though they exist and work from a normal PowerShell / Git Bash terminal on the same machine:

• git → command not found
• task → command not found
• ls, grep, find, wc, which, where → command not found
• powershell.exe → command not found

echo $PATH inside the Bash tool prints the Windows PATH (;-separated) prepended to a handful of :-separated unix-style plugin-cache entries. Bash treats the whole string as :-separated, so only the tail of the string resolves — effectively nothing from the system PATH works.

What still works

• Shell builtins (echo, cd, pwd)
• Binaries invoked by absolute unix path that land inside MSYS:
  • /mingw64/bin/git works
  • /usr/bin/ls works
• Binaries invoked by absolute Windows-style unix path inside Program Files:
  • "/c/Program Files/GitHub CLI/gh.exe" works (with quoting)
• BUT: some Windows-side binaries under C:\Users\<user>\go\bin\ are unreachable from either form (/c/Users/.../task.exe errors with No such file or directory, even when the file exists — verified by /usr/bin/ls on the parent directory).

Repro

1. Windows 11, Git Bash as the Claude Code shell
2. Fresh session
3. Ask Claude to run git status or task --version in a project
4. Observe command not found

Impact

Cannot run task, git, or any CI/test tooling from inside Claude Code via the bare command name. Work that relies on Claude running its own verification (task ci:all, git status before commits, go test, etc.) is blocked — the user must shell out manually. Absolute-path workarounds help for a few tools but are brittle (spaces, drive-letter translation, missing paths).

Workaround

None clean. Absolute unix-path invocation works for a subset (/mingw64/bin/git, /usr/bin/ls). Space-containing Windows paths need shell quoting and only sometimes resolve.