Hi @gamin-mb, that’s correct; this should be transparent to the user. Also the next version after this one (ie. version 45) will be disabling the use of shell built-ins for state exec, as this causes unintended side-effects for an unintended use-case. Note version 44 should be releasing very soon.
You are correct in that state update will update to whatever the latest version is, although you would have to look at the corresponding branch for the channel you’re on. In your case you are probably on the release channel, which maps to cli/changelog.md at release · ActiveState/cli · GitHub