Wrap all spawned Node.js child processes by adding environs and arguments ahead of the main JavaScript file argument.
Any child processes launched by that child process will also be wrapped in a similar fashion.
This is a bit of a brutal hack, designed primarily to support code
coverage reporting in cases where tests or the system under test are
loaded via child processes rather than via require()
.
It can also be handy if you want to run your own mock executable instead of some other thing when child procs call into it.
var wrap = require('spawn-wrap')
// wrap(wrapperArgs, environs)
var unwrap = wrap(['/path/to/my/main.js', 'foo=bar'], { FOO: 1 })
// later to undo the wrapping, you can call the returned function
unwrap()
In this example, the /path/to/my/main.js
file will be used as the
“main” module, whenever any Node or io.js child process is started,
whether via a call to spawn
or exec
, whether node is invoked
directly as the command or as the result of a shebang #!
lookup.
In /path/to/my/main.js
, you can do whatever instrumentation or
environment manipulation you like. When you’re done, and ready to run
the “real” main.js file (ie, the one that was spawned in the first
place), you can do this:
// /path/to/my/main.js
// process.argv[1] === 'foo=bar'
// and process.env.FOO === '1'
// my wrapping manipulations
setupInstrumentationOrCoverageOrWhatever()
process.on('exit', function (code) {
storeCoverageInfoSynchronously()
})
// now run the instrumented and covered or whatever codes
require('spawn-wrap').runMain()
Spawn-wrap responds to two environment variables, both of which are preserved through child processes.
SPAWN_WRAP_DEBUG=1
in the environment will make this module dump a
lot of information to stderr.
SPAWN_WRAP_SHIM_ROOT
can be set to a path on the filesystem where
the shim files are written in a .node-spawn-wrap-<id>
folder. By
default this is done in $HOME
, but in some environments you may wish
to point it at some other root. (For example, if $HOME
is mounted
as read-only in a virtual machine or container.)
The initial wrap call uses synchronous I/O. Probably you should not be using this script in any production environments anyway.
Also, this will slow down child process execution by a lot, since we’re adding a few layers of indirection.
The contract which this library aims to uphold is:
(Much of this made possible by foreground-child.)
There are a few ways situations in which this contract cannot be adhered to, despite best efforts:
node
is invoked in a shell script,
the PATH
environment variable is modified such that the the shim
will be run before the “real” node. However, since Windows does
not allow executing shebang scripts like regular programs, a
node.cmd
file is required.dash
doesn’t always work. So, if you
use child_process.exec()
on systems where /bin/sh
is actually
dash
, then the process may exit with a status code > 128 rather
than indicating that it received a signal.cmd.exe
is even stranger with how it propagates and interprets
unix signals. If you want your programs to be portable, then
probably you wanna not rely on signals too much.PATH
, and then calls a
specific node
binary explicitly.