[Windows] Orca Orchestrator emits unquoted compound cmd.exe /c expression — syntax error
Open 💬 0 comments Opened Jul 25, 2026 by freshoe-development
Bug Report
Codex CLI version: 0.145.0
Platform: Windows 10 (mingw64/Git Bash)
Description
The Orca orchestrator emits a compound cmd.exe /d /c command with bare & and nested parentheses without quoting, causing:
The syntax of the command is incorrect.
Failing command (verbatim)
C:/Windows/System32/cmd.exe /d /c if defined ORCA_CLI_COMMAND (echo CLI=%ORCA_CLI_COMMAND%) else (echo CLI=) & if defined ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT (echo DEV=%ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT%) else (echo DEV=)
The & is parsed by cmd.exe as a top-level command separator before the if/else is evaluated, and the unquoted compound expression breaks the parser.
Expected behavior
The orchestrator should wrap the entire compound expression in double quotes:
cmd.exe /d /c "if defined ORCA_CLI_COMMAND (echo CLI=%ORCA_CLI_COMMAND%) else (echo CLI=) & if defined ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT (echo DEV=%ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT%) else (echo DEV=)"
Steps to reproduce
- Install Codex CLI 0.145.0 on Windows 10
- Trigger the Orca orchestrator (it fires automatically on startup)
- Observe the
cmd.exesyntax error in the terminal
Workaround
Set the environment variables so the if branches resolve cleanly:
set ORCA_CLI_COMMAND=
set ORCA_DEV_REPO_ROOT=