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nca - Node Command Alias

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A command line utility to define cross platform commands and aliases.

Install

npm install -g node-command-alias

To install the latest version with security updates applied use @dev tag:

npm install -g node-command-alias@dev

Install bash autocomplete

nca completion >> ~/.bashrc

Completion for git-bash

Completion also works on git-bash: there is a bug in yargs (the library used to implement the cli) which returns the wrong path to nca. To fix it just convert the windows style path to unix style. It should work even when using nvm inside git-bash (in the example nodejs directory is a windows shortcut).

# before
type_list=$(C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\node-command-alias\bin\nca --get-yargs-completions "${args[@]}")

# after
type_list=$("/c/Program Files/nodejs/node_modules/node-command-alias/bin/nca" --get-yargs-completions "${args[@]}")

Usage

The heart of nca resides in $HOME/.nca/config.yml.

This file is where your cross platform commands will be declared.

includePaths:
  # be careful, absolute paths needs to use windows style even when running inside a git-bash session i.e. C:\absolute\path\to\alternative-config.yml
  - /absolute/path/to/alternative-config.yml
  - ../relative/path/to/another-alternative-config.yml
  - /absolute/path/to/directory
  - ./relative/path/to/another-directory

commands:
  - name: hello-bash
    description: prints hello
    command: echo hello
    commandType: Native # (default option)
  - name: invoke-bash
    description: runs ./hello.sh
    command: ./hello.sh
    # before invoking the command, sets the current working directory
    # to be the same as the one where this config is stored
    runInConfigDirectory: true
  - name: hello-js
    description: prints hello using javascript
    command: console.log(hello)
    commandType: Function
  - name: run-js
    description: executes a javascript file
    command: ./index.js
    commandType: Module
    # overrides yargs default completion
    completion:
      completionArray: [foo, bar]

If you do not like to store all the nca commands into this file you can declare alternative yaml configurations under includePath variable. If you declare a directory as a path to include, all the yaml files defined inside it will be loaded.

You can also change the default main config file by defining ncaMainConfigFilePath environment variable. I.E.

export ncaMainConfigFilePath=/path/to/your/main/config.yml

Config API

Yaml configuration model is deployed to github pages. Refer to:

Config for the config file entrypoint, where you will define your cross platform node commands.
CommandHandlerInput when defining function and module type nca commands. It contains options, arguments and utility functions that will be passed as an argument of the function/module.
CompletionInput when defining a nca command custom completion. Similarly to CommandHandlerInput, it exposes current cli arguments and utility functions, allowing to create complex custom completion.

For more information please refer to the following README.

Examples

Refer to this README for the documentation. The examples should cover every situation, from the entry level to the most advanced ones.

Otherwise, refer to this git repository where I track the ones I have defined.

Troubleshooting

When dealing with custom completion it is possible that something does not work as expected.

You can enable debug mode by setting ncaDebug variable to true.

export ncaDebug=true
nca $command1 $command2 # tab press

# or you can manually ask completion with the following command
nca --get-yargs-completion $command1 $command2

Each time completion is invoked, cli values will be logged in the same directory where the main config file is stored (by default at $HOME/.config/out.log).

Development

cd /path/to/nca

npm install

npm run build # compile

npm link # create link to project folder

npm unlink --global node-command-alias # remove global link after finishing testing

npm install ./.github/script/setup-test.mjs # install dependencies required by tests