KO | EN

GitLite

Minimalist Open Source Repository Search Engine

gitlite — search

#dsh #ai-agents #dsh-plugin #codex #developer-tools #claude-code #windows #desktop-app #typescript #rust #ai-agent #cli

node-teen_process

★ 28 Open GitHub ↗

A slightly more grown-up version of Node's child_process

// repository documentation

Was this content helpful?

★ 0 (0 ratings)

node-teen_process
=================

A grown-up version of Node's child_process. `exec` is really useful, but it
suffers many limitations. This is an es7 (`async`/`await`) implementation of
`exec` that uses `spawn` under the hood. It takes care of wrapping commands and
arguments so we don't have to care about escaping spaces. It can also return
stdout/stderr even when the command fails, or times out. Importantly, it's also
not susceptible to max buffer issues.

Published as both ESM and CommonJS, so `import {exec} from 'teen_process'` and
`const {exec} = require('teen_process')` both work.

## teen_process.exec

Examples:

```js
import { exec } from 'teen_process';

// basic usage
let {stdout, stderr, code} = await exec('ls', ['/usr/local/bin']);
console.log(stdout.split("\n"));  // array of files
console.log(stderr);              // ''
console.log(code);                // 0

// works with spaces
await exec('/command/with spaces.sh', ['foo', 'argument with spaces'])
// as though we had run: "/command/with spaces.sh" foo "argument with spaces"

// nice error handling that still includes stderr/stdout/code
try {
  await exec('echo_and_exit', ['foo', '10']);
} catch (e) {
  console.log(e.message);  // "Exited with code 10"
  console.log(e.stdout);   // "foo"
  console.log(e.code);     // 10
}
```

The `exec` function takes some options, with these defaults:

```js
{
  cwd: undefined,
  env: process.env,
  timeout: null,
  killSignal: 'SIGTERM',
  encoding: 'utf8',
  ignoreOutput: false,
  stdio: "inherit",
  isBuffer: false,
  shell: undefined,
  logger: undefined,
  maxStdoutBufferSize: 100 * 1024 * 1024, // 100 MB
  maxStderrBufferSize: 100 * 1024 * 1024, // 100 MB
}
```

Most of these are self-explanatory. `ignoreOutput` is useful if you have a very
chatty process whose output you don't care about and don't want to add it to
the memory consumed by your program.

Both buffer size limits are needed to avoid memory overflow while collecting
process output. If the overall size of output chunks for different stream types exceeds the the given one then the oldest chunks will be pulled out in order to keep the memory load within the acceptable ranges.

If you're on Windows, you'll want to pass `shell: true`, because `exec`
actually uses `spawn` under the hood, and is therefore subject to the issues
noted about Windows + `spawn` in [the Node
docs](https://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html).

If `stdio` option is not set to `inheirt`, you may not get colored output from your process. In this case you can explore the subprocess's documentation to see if an option like `--colors` or `FORCE_COLORS` can be specified. you can also try to set `env.FORCE_COLOR = true` and see if it works.

Example:

```js
try {
  await exec('sleep', ['10'], {timeout: 500, killSignal: 'SIGINT'});
} catch (e) {
  console.log(e.message);  // "'sleep 10' timed out after 500ms"
}
```

The `isBuffer` option specifies that the returned standard I/O is an instance
of a [Buffer](https://nodejs.org/api/buffer.html).

Example:

```js
let {stdout, stderr} = await exec('cat', [filename], {isBuffer: true});
Buffer.isBuffer(stdout); // true
```

The `logger` option allows stdout and stderr to be sent to a particular logger,
as it it received. This is overridden by the `ignoreOutput` option.

## teen_process.SubProcess

`spawn` is already pretty great but for some uses there's a fair amount of
boilerplate, especially when using in an `async/await` context. `teen_process`
also exposes a `SubProcess` class, which can be used to cut down on some
boilerplate. It has 2 methods, `start` and `stop`:

```js
import { SubProcess } from 'teen_process';

async function tailFileForABit () {
  let proc = new SubProcess('tail', ['-f', '/var/log/foo.log']);
  await proc.start();
  await proc.stop();
}
```

Errors with start/stop are thrown in the calling context.

### Options

The instance constructor accepts same options that Node.js's
[spawn](https://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html#child_processspawncommand-args-options)
API plus some custom options:

* `isBuffer` - If set to `true` then both stdout and stderr chunks are delivered
  as buffers rather than strings to the following entities:
  - `startDetector` argument
  - `output` event
* `encoding` - If provided then arguments of the `startDetector` argument and of the
  `output` event will be encoded to strings using this given encoding, unless `isBuffer`
  is set to `true`. If no explicit encoding is provided then `utf8` encoding is used by
  default.

### Events

You can listen to 8 events:

* `exit`
* `stop`
* `end`
* `die`
* `output`
* `lines-stdout`
* `lines-stderr`
* `stream-line`

```js
proc.on('exit', (code, signal) => {
  // if we get here, all we know is that the proc exited
  console.log(`exited with code ${code} from signal ${signal}`);
  // exited with code 127 from signal SIGHUP
});

proc.on('stop', (code, signal) => {
  // if we get here, we know that we intentionally stopped the proc
  // by calling proc.stop
});

proc.on('end', (code, signal) => {
  // if we get here, we know that the process stopped outside of our control
  // but with a 0 exit code
});

proc.on('die', (code, signal) => {
  // if we get here, we know that the process stopped outside of our control
  // with a non-zero exit code
});

proc.on('output', (stdout, stderr) => {
  console.log(`stdout: ${stdout}`);
  console.log(`stderr: ${stderr}`);
});

// line-stderr is just the same
proc.on('line-stdout', (line) => {
  console.log(line);
});

// stream-line gives you one line at a time, with [STDOUT] or [STDERR]
// prepended
proc.on('stream-line', line => {
  console.log(line);
  // [STDOUT] foo
});
// so we could do: proc.on('stream-line', console.log.bind(console))
```

### Start Detectors

How does `SubProcess` know when to return control from `start()`? Well, the
default is to wait until there is some output. You can also pass in a number,
which will cause it to wait for that number of ms, or a function (which I call
a `startDetector`) which takes stdout and stderr and returns true when you want
control back. Examples:

```js
await proc.start(); // will continue when stdout or stderr has received data
await proc.start(0); // will continue immediately

let sd = (stdout, stderr) => {
  return stderr.indexOf('blarg') !== -1;
};
await proc.start(sd); // will continue when stderr receives 'blarg'
```

A custom `startDetector` can also throw an error if it wants to declare the
start unsuccessful. For example, if we know that the first output might contain
a string which invalidates the process (for us), we could define a custom
`startDetector` as follows:

```js
let sd = (stdout, stderr) => {
  if (/fail/.test(stderr)) {
    throw new Error("Encountered failure condition");
  }
  return stdout || stderr;
};
await proc.start(sd); // will continue when output is received that doesn't
                      // match 'fail'
```

Finally, if you want to specify a maximum time to wait for a process to start,
you can do that by passing a second parameter in milliseconds to `start()`:

```js
// use the default startDetector and throw an error if we wait for more than
// 1000ms for output
await proc.start(null, 1000);
```

### Finishing Processes

After the process has been started you can use `join()` to wait for it to
finish on its own:

```js
await proc.join(); // will throw on exitcode not 0
await proc.join([0, 1]); // will throw on exitcode not 0 or 1
```

And how about killing the processes? Can you provide a custom signal, instead
of using the default `SIGTERM`? Why yes:

```js
await proc.stop('SIGHUP');
```

If your process might not be killable and you don't really care, you can also
pass a timeout, which will return control to you in the form of an error after
the timeout has passed:

```js
try {
  await proc.stop('SIGHUP', 1000);
} catch (e) {
  console.log("Proc failed to stop, ignoring cause YOLO");
}
```

All in all, this makes it super simple to, say, write a script that tails
a file for X seconds and then stops, using async/await and pretty
straightforward error handling.

```js
async function boredTail (filePath, boredAfter = 10000) {
  let p = new SubProcess('tail', ['-f', filePath]);
  p.on('stream-line', console.log);
  await p.start();
  await Bluebird.delay(boredAfter);
  await p.stop();
}
```

node-teen_process

Explore Similar Repositories

Was this content helpful?

Recent Feedback

Download README