[Buildbot] #2878: Windows escaping seem to produce problems

[Buildbot trac]

#2878: Windows escaping seem to produce problems
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Reporter:  sa2ajj   |       Owner:
    Type:  defect   |      Status:  new
Priority:  major    |   Milestone:  0.9.+
 Version:  0.8.9    |  Resolution:
Keywords:  windows  |
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Comment (by dpb):

 Since I'm the one who implemented the current escaping logic, I think I
 need to weigh in.

 Unfortunately, the pastes in the description are no longer available, so I
 don't know for sure, but I'm going to guess that the string `%VCENV_BAT%`
 was used as the first element of a list passed as the command to
 `ShellCommand`. When the command is a list, Buildbot runs the process in
 such a way that the program's `argv` are exactly the elements of the list.
 On Windows, that involves escaping all characters that are meaningful to
 the shell, including `%` and `&`.

 This is nothing new. As far as I understand, on Unix-likes it has always
 been that way. On Windows, the escaping has been rather lax (only handling
 the pipe character) until I tightened it around 0.8.9. I did this to
 ensure consistency between Windows and non-Windows, and to solve issues
 like [https://lists.buildbot.net/pipermail/devel/2013-August/009978.html
 these] (I had my own problem similar to that one).

 To summarize, I don't think there is a problem here. If you want shell
 processing, you need to tell Buildbot to use the shell by passing the
 command as a single string. No escaping happens then.

--
Ticket URL: <http://trac.buildbot.net/ticket/2878#comment:17>
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