Open issues on Node.js

[sindresorhus]

Some ideas:

• Improved errors
  • Include command
• Buffer a Node.js stream to a string:

  nano-spawn/index.js

  Lines 86 to 97 in 8bdc484

  	const bufferOutput = async (stream, result, streamName) => {
  	if (!stream) {
  	return;
  	}
  	stream.setEncoding('utf8');
  	result[streamName] = '';
  	stream.on('data', chunk => {
  	result[streamName] += chunk;
  	});
  	await finished(stream, {cleanup: true});
  	};

• inheritEnv option
• Duration on the ChildProcess and errors
• Windows stuff: Windows support #12
• child_process/promises.execFile with:
  • Does not throw on non-0 exit code or signal termination
  • Does not handle subprocess.std* stream errors, which leads to unhandled promise rejections
  • Opportunity to also add .output (interleaved).
• The stdout/stderr output is only buffered on success, not failure
• promise.child is a ChildProcess that might not have been spawned (e.g. if the command was misspelled). With nano-spawn/pico-spawn, it is a promise that is rejected in such cases.

Thoughts? Anything missing?

[ehmicky]

Buffer a Node.js stream to a string

They might argue that this is available with execFile(). The thing with it though is that it does not give you access to the subprocess instance.

[sindresorhus]

Buffer a Node.js stream to a string

I meant a general Node.js stream utility like Readable#toArray().

The thing with it though is that it does not give you access to the subprocess instance.

It's returned in the callback version and available as a properly in the promise version.

[ehmicky]

I meant a general Node.js stream utility like Readable#toArray().

There is node:stream/consumers text(). We can't use it in nano-spawn though because it uses stream.read() under-the-hood, which prevents promise.stdout iteration (since it uses stream.read() too under-the-hood, and that cannot have multiple consumers at once, unlike stream.on('data')).

It's returned in the callback version and available as a properly in the promise version.

execFile() has a special promisified version when using util.promisify(execFile). They probably should expose it under some node:child_process/promises module though.

[sindresorhus]

There is node:stream/consumers text(). We can't use it in nano-spawn though because it uses stream.read() under-the-hood, which prevents promise.stdout iteration (since it uses stream.read() too under-the-hood, and that cannot have multiple consumers at once, unlike stream.on('data')).

Maybe we could propose some kind of multicast() utility, which would make a stream multi-consumable even when stream.read() is used? Basically, a JS version of https://developer.apple.com/documentation/combine/publishers/multicast

I tried my hand and making something for this: https://github.com/sindresorhus/multicast-stream

[sindresorhus]

I think a 'child_process/promises'#.execFile proposal would be really useful. Let me know if you're interested in collaborating on that.