git-repos switches to a new (potentially different) shell

[Jiehong]

Description
Running tv git-repos finds repos, but when hitting enter, it opens the repo in a different shell.

Example
On MacOS, the $SHELL variable is set to zsh, yet, my terminal emulator is set to always start fish instead.

so, tv git-repos drops me into zsh when going to a specific repo.

Expected behavior
git-repos should only cd to the repo, not create a new shell.

Environment

• OS: MacOS 26
• TV version: television 0.15.9
• shell: [fish
• terminal: Ghostty
• Your configuration file (~/.config/television/config.toml)
• default
• The channel you are using

git-repos.toml contains this:

[actions.cd]
description = "Open a new shell in the selected repository"
command = "cd {} && $SHELL"
mode = "execute"

I think the default command should be cd {} without executing a new subshell (which is an incorrect shell for me).

What's the reasoning behind starting a new shell when going to a new git repo?

[nspr49]

I just skimmed through the code, so take this with a grain of salt, but it looks like Television basically spawns a command for the selected action. That command is a child process of the Television process, which itself is a child process of your shell.

Child processes can’t really change the working directory of their parent process, so simply changing the command to cd {} probably wouldn’t do much. It would run cd in the spawned command/shell, then exit, leaving your original shell in the old directory.

I think the current cd {} && $SHELL behavior is meant to work around that by starting a shell in the selected directory.

For your case, you could work around it by either setting your user shell to fish, or by running tv update-channels, opening ~/.config/television/cable/git-repos.toml, and changing:

command = "cd {} && $SHELL"

to:

command = "cd {} && fish"

[Jiehong]

@nspr49 I quickly realised after posting that ticket that cd {} alone wasn't working anymore :D

I'm wondering if, perhaps, tv could check its parent process and shell and use that as a default? (idk how reliably can a process find out its own parents, especially on MacOS).