How do i change the default shell for shell-command

Question

I am having an issue with one of the plugins i am running because its trying to use fish and does not like the parameters.

Is there a way i can change emacs to use bash for any plugins that use shell-command or similar functions.

(setenv "SHELL" "/bin/bash")
(setq explicit-shell-file-name "/bin/bash")

I tried the above but shell-command still seems to use fish.

Answer 1

You need to change the option shell-file-name.

---

(setenv "SHELL" "/bin/bash")

This doesn't work since Emacs is already running thus it's too late, Emacs initializes shell-file-name according to SHELL during startup. Something like

$ SHELL=/bin/bash emacs

should work.

(setq explicit-shell-file-name "/bin/bash")

This is for M-x shell, not M-x shell-command.

Answer 2

You can also do:

(setenv "ESHELL" "/bin/bash")

Here's an excerpt from the implementation of shell.

...
   ;; Rain or shine, BUFFER must be current by now.
   (unless (comint-check-proc buffer)
     (let* ((prog (or explicit-shell-file-name
                      (getenv "ESHELL") shell-file-name))
            (name (file-name-nondirectory prog))
...

Here's a link to it in the emacs mirror on github

https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/a1abb6a85e6605c256595b8d7b885018e5421c28/lisp/shell.el#L927