How to run .sh on Windows Command Prompt?

Question

How can I run .sh on Windows 7 Command Prompt? I always get this error when I try to run this line in it,

app/build/build.sh

error,

'app' is not recognized...

or,

bash app/build/build.sh

error,

'bash' is not recognized...

Any ideas what have I missed?

Here the screen grab,

Answer 1

The error message indicates that you have not installed bash, or it is not in your PATH.

The top Google hit is http://win-bash.sourceforge.net/ but you also need to understand that most Bash scripts expect a Unix-like environment; so just installing Bash is probably unlikely to allow you to run a script you found on the net, unless it was specifically designed for this particular usage scenario. The usual solution to that is https://www.cygwin.com/ but there are many possible alternatives, depending on what exactly it is that you want to accomplish.

If Windows is not central to your usage scenario, installing a free OS (perhaps virtualized) might be the simplest way forward.

The second error message is due to the fact that Windows nominally accepts forward slash as a directory separator, but in this context, it is being interpreted as a switch separator. In other words, Windows parses your command line as app /build /build.sh (or, to paraphrase with Unix option conventions, app --build --build.sh). You could try app\build\build.sh but it is unlikely to work, because of the circumstances outlined above.