java feature fails to install

[jakub-bochenski]

4.731 Check if OpenJDK is available for version 17 for ms Distro
4.733 sh: 34: /usr/local/sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh: source: not found
4.734 sh: 65: /usr/local/sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh: [[: not found
4.734 sh: 67: /usr/local/sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh: [[: not found
4.734 sh: 79: /usr/local/sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

https://github.com/devcontainers/features/blob/main/src/java/install.sh#L221

https://github.com/devcontainers/features/blob/main/src/java/install.sh#L235

You can't just source bash files from arbitrary shell

[jakub-bochenski]

A workaround is to set the default shell when creating you user:

useradd --system --create-home --uid 500 --gid 500 --shell /bin/bash ${USERNAME}

But a real fix would be to select bash as shell for su -c if you need the shell to be bash

[Kaniska244]

Hi @jakub-bochenski

Thank you for reporting this issue. As its mentioned here, bash shell is actually required for the platform to install the java dev container feature.

[jakub-bochenski]

Thanks for the clarification. I understand that bash is required by the feature scripts.

However, the issue here isn’t that bash is unavailable — it’s that the script invokes su -c without specifying the shell. In that case, the command is executed using the target user's login shell. If that shell is /bin/sh, the script ends up sourcing sdkman-init.sh with sh, which fails because it contains bash-specific syntax (source, [[ ]], etc.).

So even when bash is installed, the install step can still fail depending on the user's configured shell.

One workaround is to create the user with /bin/bash as the login shell:

useradd --system --create-home --uid 500 --gid 500 --shell /bin/bash ${USERNAME}

But a more robust fix would be to explicitly run the command with bash when using su -c, for example:

su - ${USERNAME} -s /bin/bash -c "<command>"

or

su - ${USERNAME} -c "bash -lc '<command>'"

That would ensure the feature works regardless of the user's default shell.