universal-shell v35.4.0

universal-shell

Library for calling POSIX-style shell commands cross-platform. Automatically translates commands for Windows support out of the box.

shell.run() returns a Promise that will resolve or reject to an object containing process information of type SpawnResult:

export interface SpawnResult {
  code: number | null;
  stdout: string;
  stderr: string;
}

Pattern

/**
 * Create a new process where shells will run.
 */
const shell = createShell();

/**
 * Read the exit code, stdout, and stderr from shell.run().
 * 
 * Note: POSIX-like syntax works on Windows! See "Specification" below.
 */
const { code, stdout, stderr } = await shell.run("cp -rf src dest && yarn --cwd dest some-command");

/**
 * Run sequential commands.
 */
await shell.run(
  "cd dir && yarn do_stuff",
  "cd otherDir && yarn do_stuff"
);

Override per-platform

You can override the command to run per-platform in shell.run(...).

const shell = createShell();

/**
 * All process.platform types are supported, i.e. "win32" and "darwin".
 * 
 * "posix" matches "linux" and "darwin".
 */ 
const { code, stdout, stderr } = await shell.run({
  win32: "...",
  posix: "..."
});

Custom options

You can pass custom spawn options to createShell({ ... }).

/**
 * Disable logging of commands and pass custom spawn options. 
 */
const customShell = createShell({
  log: false,
  // Custom process.spawn() options.
  stdio: 'inherit',
  // ...
});

Specification

This section explains how shell command strings (like "cd dir/") are supported on Windows, as well as translations for specific commands.

Shell support

Specific commands

Footnotes

Quotes on Windows

You should use single quotes in your strings if possible for interoperability with Windows.

const { code, stdout, stderr } = await shell.run("my-cmd 'a string'");