gemini-cli - 💡(How to fix) Fix WSL2 PTY Deadlock: Verifiable regression in inter-OS binary execution (Regression of #15233) [1 participants]

What happened?

Executing Windows binaries (e.g., pwsh.exe, cmd.exe) from within a WSL2 (Linux) environment via a PTY (the current default behavior in ShellExecutionService) results in process deadlocks or indefinite hangs. This is a known architectural limitation of WSL2's inter-process communication that has resurfaced in the current main branch.

What did you expect to happen?

The CLI should detect when a command pipeline contains Windows binaries while running on Linux/WSL and automatically bypass the PTY for stability, falling back to standard child_process execution. This ensures that cross-OS tool execution remains reliable.

Client information

Platform: WSL2 (Linux) Kernel: 6.6.87.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Version: 0.40.0-nightly.20260414.g5b1f7375a

Login information

N/A (Core execution logic issue)

Anything else we need to know?

This issue was previously tracked in #15233, which was closed as "inactive" on 2026-03-22. Testing on commit c47233a47 (current main) confirms that the deadlock is reproducible.

I have verified a fix that utilizes MZ magic byte detection in the shell pipeline to trigger an automatic PTY bypass. This fix has been tested and confirmed to resolve the hang without impacting native Linux execution.

I am happy to contribute a PR for this fix once the issue is reviewed and marked with the help-wanted label.