Security Model

Each command list entry runs in its own brace group, joined with &&, and is passed to eval as a shell-quoted payload so a trailing # or & cannot break the chain. Groups run in the current shell, so a cd or variable assignment carries to later entries. An entry may start at most one background job; structured or nested exec forms are rejected during Ninja generation.

Every legacy recipe is handed to Windows PowerShell (powershell.exe, not pwsh) as an encoded, non-interactive, no-profile command. A command list shares one process and is checked with $LASTEXITCODE after every entry. Use PowerShell syntax: $name is a variable and $env:NAME reads the environment. {{ ins }} and {{ outs }} render as single-quoted PowerShell arguments. Recipes over Windows' command-line limit and up to 1 MiB are routed through a self-deleting .ps1 response file.

Set NETSUKE_WINDOWS_SHELL=bash to keep POSIX interpretation through Git Bash or MSYS2 (bash.exe on PATH). Netsuke verifies bash.exe --version before build or Ninja-tool execution and stops with install instructions otherwise. In CI, install Git explicitly, prepend its bin directory to PATH, and launch Netsuke from a pwsh step rather than relying on a workflow-wide shell: bash.

Write this

targets:
  - name: build/app
    sources: src/main.c
    command: >-
      ${CC:-cc} $CFLAGS {{ ins }} -o {{ outs }}
      && echo "built on $HOSTNAME"

$CC, $CFLAGS, and $HOSTNAME reach /bin/sh as literal shell variables. On the PowerShell route, write $env:CC instead; PowerShell does not perform POSIX ${VAR:-default} expansion.

Migrating a beta2 or beta3 manifest

• Replace the historical spelling $$PATH with $PATH. On POSIX and Bash routes $$ is the shell's process identifier; in PowerShell it is the last token of the previous command, so the extra dollar now changes the result.
• Replace any $in or $out path placeholder with {{ ins }} or {{ outs }}. Beta3 still rewrote them in script: recipes; since v0.1.0-beta4 they reach the shell as ordinary variables there too, as $ins and $outs always have.
• On POSIX and Bash routes a marker may appear unquoted, single-quoted, or double-quoted, but not inside a command substitution or backticks. In PowerShell, use markers unquoted; quoted and command-substitution sites are rejected.
• Build and default-target paths escape a space as $ , Ninja's own path escape. They reject | and control characters, which Ninja cannot represent, and also $ and colons, which Ninja could escape but Netsuke does not yet accept.
• A literal $ in a description, depfile, deps, or pool is doubled, so it prints as written: a description of CC $out shows CC $out, not the output path. Newline, carriage return, and NUL are rejected in those fields.

YAML first

The manifest must be valid YAML before any template expansion happens. Structural mistakes fail early, before commands are generated.

Quoted path markers

{{ ins }} and {{ outs }} are quoted as path arguments for the selected recipe shell. Other rendered Jinja values are not automatically shell-quoted, and the shell_escape filter described in older drafts is not implemented in v0.1.0-beta4: handwritten shell fragments remain the author's responsibility.

Typed diagnostics

CLI errors are designed to carry context, hints, and localized output rather than dropping raw parser failures on the floor.