@alphahydrae/exec

The execvp function for Node.js.

import { execvp } from '@alphahydrae/exec';

execvp('ls', ['.']);

console.log(`
  This will never print because the executing Node.js
  program is replaced by the executed command, keeping
  the same process ID and file descriptors.
`);

If you're familiar with Bash's exec function, this is the same for Node.js.

This package was developed to be used in Node.js scripts that are frontends to execute other commands. For example, a script that would build and execute a complex SSH or Ansible command.

• Installation
• Support matrix
• Credits

Installation

npm i @alphahydrae/exec

Support matrix

| OS & Architecture | Node.js 20 | Node.js 22 | Node.js 24 | | :---------------- | :--------: | :--------: | :--------: | | macOS x64 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | macOS arm64 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Linux x64 gnu | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Linux x64 musl | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Linux arm64 gnu | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Linux arm64 musl | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Linux arm gnu | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Android arm64 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Android armv7 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | FreeBSD x64 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Windows x64 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Windows x32 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Windows arm64 | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |

The exec family of functions is part of the POSIX operating system API, so it will not work on Windows.

Credits

This package is a re-implementation of https://github.com/jprichardson/node-kexec in Rust, also inspired by the following conversations:

• A way to call execl, execle, execlp, execv, execvP or execvp from Node.js
• execve in node

Also a big thank you to the following Rust projects for making it easy:

• NAPI-RS (build pre-compiled Node.js addons in Rust)
• nix (Rust-friendly bindings to the various *nix system functions)