Windows WSL OpenWRT build failures due to spaces in $PATH variables

Software
1

When building the OpenWRT image for my EKH01-03 via WSL on Windows 10, the build fails with the error:

find: The relative path 'Files/PuTTY/' is included in the PATH environment variable, which is insecure in combination with the -execdir action of find. Please remove that entry from $PATH

This happens because of spaces in the Windows-mounted path variables like “Program Files”. I resolved it by removing the problematic variables with:

export PATH=$(echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n' | grep -v '/mnt' | tr '\n' ':' | sed 's/:$//')

The build command I was using was:

FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1 make -j8 V=sc 2>&1 | tee log.txt

Is there a simpler workaround for WSL users in this situation?

2

Not really, one of the approaches we use internally is to put this make script in our PATH, mutating spaces in the PATH before calling the intended /usr/bin/make. A bit more of a “set and forget” approach.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail
# set -x

# A script to use on WSL that removes space containing elements from the path when you make.

sep=:
any_changes=0
new_path=()
while read -rd "$sep" i; do
    if [[ "$i" = *" "* ]]; then
        any_changes=1
        continue
    fi
    new_path+=("$i")
done < <(printf '%s%s' "$PATH" "$sep")

if [ "$any_changes" -eq 1 ]; then
    echo "Warning, you had spaces in your PATH, removed by the script." 1>&2
fi

PATH=$(IFS=$sep; echo "${new_path[*]}")
/usr/bin/make "$@"
1 Like
3

That is far more sensible, cheers.