rtk err loses argument quoting (breaks node -e / python3 -c) and exits 0 on failure #2985

Description

rtk err <cmd> appears to re-join its argv into a single string and hand it to sh -c, which loses the original argument quoting. Any argument containing shell metacharacters — most commonly node -e '...' or python3 -c '...' — is re-split by the shell and fails with a syntax error.

Worse, the failure is reported as exit 0, so a caller (or an agent) sees a "successful" run that never actually executed the command.

Repro steps

rtk err node -e 'console.log("a")'

Actual:

sh: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `('
sh: -c: line 0: `node -e console.log("a")'

echo $?   # -> 0

Note the echoed command in the error: the single quotes around console.log("a") are gone, so sh sees the parentheses as unquoted metacharacters.

Running the same command directly works fine:

node -e 'console.log("a")'   # -> a

Expected

Two things:

1. rtk err should preserve argument boundaries — exec the argv directly rather than reconstructing a shell string (or shell-quote each argument before passing to sh -c).
2. It should propagate the child's exit code. A command that failed to run must not exit 0.

Actual

Quoting is lost, the command never runs, and the exit status is 0.

Impact

rtk err is the recommended wrapper for commands RTK has no dedicated filter for — which is exactly the population of commands most likely to carry -e / -c / quoted arguments. The silent exit-0 makes this especially bad for agents, which will treat the failure as a success.

Version / environment

• rtk 0.43.0, macOS arm64 (Darwin 24.6.0)

Note

The exit-code half may share a root cause with #2974 (pnpm/eslint exit code swallowed); the quoting loss looks independent.