Boost Process 1.71 does not look in environment path anymore

Question

I have been using boost 1.65, did not change the code, updated boost to version 1.71 and now suddenly boost::process::child("command-in-path") does not inherit the environment of the executing process. How can I recover the behavior, is it possible without parsing the command every time to find the executable in path?

Answer 1

I haven't checked whether the behaviour actually changed, but I know there's a way to explicitly allow Boost to search the path:

Keep in mind that searching the path can easily be a security issue because it can be compromised, or attackers can leverage knowledge of the path setting to intercept executables. This is why you'd expect search_path to be OFF by default (except for the system interface, which is traditionally insecure)

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#include <boost/process.hpp>

int main() {
    namespace bp = boost::process;

    bp::child c(
        bp::search_path("date"),
        std::vector<std::string> { "+%s" });
    c.wait();
}