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Shell - CI/CD Glossary Definition

A shell is the command interpreter that reads commands, expands variables and globs, and launches processes. Common shells are bash, sh (dash), zsh, and on Windows PowerShell.

In CI

GitHub Actions defaults to bash on Linux and macOS and PowerShell on Windows. The default bash runs with set -eo pipefail, so a failing command or pipeline aborts the step. Override per step with the shell: key.

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