Unable to run Bash 5 from launchd

bashcatalinalaunchd

I have the following launchd agent:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>bash-check</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Users/spark/tmp/bash-check</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/Users/laktak/bash-check.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

With the following script bash-check:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash

type bash
bash --version

I cannot get it to use Bash 5 (/usr/local/bin/bash), the log from launchctl start bash-check is always:

bash is /bin/bash
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin19)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Best Answer

Your script uses type to find the first instance of bash within PATH and then calls exactly that instance. So if /bin is before /usr/local/bin (or, more likely, /usr/local/bin isn't in PATH) the macOS version of bash is found and executed.

To check the version of the running shell use

echo $BASH_VERSION

instead.

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