What's the difference between process and shell in vscode tasks.json

Question

The Custom tasks section of the Tasks in Visual Studio Code describe the task's properties. There is a type property that define task's type:

type: The task's type. For a custom task, this can either be shell or process. If shell is specified, the command is interpreted as a shell command (for example: bash, cmd, or PowerShell). If process is specified, the command is interpreted as a process to execute.

I couldn't understand what's the different between them. No matter I choose shell or process, all the execute results are all the same.

So what's the different between interpreted as a shell command and command is interpreted as a process to execute really mean?

Answer 1

The shell commands can only run inside a shell such as DIR for cmd and if for bash. So when you want to run shell commands, you have to use "type": "shell" setting to run it correctly. When you want to just run a program such as .bat, .sh or .exe, then you can just use "type": "process" setting.

Answer 2

well, I recently troubled by a problem, and I finally done it by changing the type from "process" to "shell" and I think this might help you: I'm trying to run more than one .cpp files, and I used a wildcard in the args:"${fileDirname}/.cpp". When the type was process, I cannot run the project successfully, as it always tell me: "*.cpp":no such file or directory and when I change to "shell" it goes well. This might be one of the differences between "process" and "shell".