executive

executive

An easy to use wrapper around child_process.spawn, useful for Cakefiles and the like. Pipes stdout, stderr and stdin so you don't have to. Think of it as a streaming child_process.exec with a few extra goodies.

Examples

var exec = require('executive');

exec('ls', function(err, out, code) {
    // Done, no need to echo out as it's piped to stdout by default.
});

Also supports simple serial execution of commands:

var exec = require('executive');

exec(['ls', 'ls', 'ls'], function(err, out, code) {
    // All three ls commands are called in order.
});

Arguments are parsed out properly for you:

var exec = require('executive');

exec('ls -AGF Foo\\ bar', function(err, out, code) {
    // Note the escaped folder name.
});

If you'd prefer not to pipe stdin, stdout, stderr:

var exec = require('executive');

exec(['ls', 'ls'], {quiet: true}, function(err, out, code) {
    // Not a peep is heard, and both ls commands will be executed.
});

...or slightly more succint:

exec.quiet(['ls', 'ls'], function(err, out, code) {
    // both commands executed
});

In the case of a failure, no additional commands will be executed:

exec(['ls', 'aaaaa', 'ls'], function(err, out, code) {
    // Only the first command succeeds, the last is never called.
});

...but you can also choose to ignore errors:

exec(['ls', 'aaaaaa', 'ls'], {safe: false}, function(err, out, code) {
    // Both commands execute despite aaaaaa not being a valid executable.
});

If you need to interact with a program, for instance vim, use interactive mode:

exec.interactive('vim', function(err) {
    // Edit your commit message or whatnot
});

You even do whatever you want with the child process object:

var exec = require('executive');

child = exec.quiet('ls');
child.stdout.on('data', function(data) {
    console.log(data.toString());
});

It's especially nice to use in a Cakefile:

exec = require 'executive'

task 'package', 'Package project', ->
  exec '''
    mkdir -p dist
    rm -rf dist/*
    cp manifest.json dist
    cp -rf assets dist
    cp -rf lib dist
    cp -rf views dist
    zip -r package.zip dist
    rm -rf dist
  '''.split '\n'