rs-cross-spawn

Cross-platform process spawning powered by Rust — a drop-in native replacement for child_process.spawn with PATHEXT resolution, CMD built-in detection, and CREATE_NO_WINDOW support.

Built with napi-rs wrapping the cross-spawn Rust crate.

Why?

The npm package cross-spawn solves cross-platform spawn issues by adding fallback logic in JavaScript. rs-cross-spawn solves the same problem at the native layer — one implementation, no fallback, no JavaScript workarounds.

API

execProcess(cmd, args?, options?) → { pid, stdout, stderr, exitCode }

Buffered execution — spawns a process and returns stdout/stderr as buffers once it exits.

const { execProcess } = require('rs-cross-spawn');
const result = execProcess('node', ['-e', 'console.log("hi")']);
console.log(result.stdout.toString()); // "hi\n"

spawn(cmd, args?, options?, onStdout?, onStderr?, onExit?) → { pid, kill() }

Streaming execution — buffers of stdout/stderr are delivered via callbacks as they arrive.

Callbacks receive (error, value) following Node.js convention (first argument is null on success).

const { spawn } = require('rs-cross-spawn');
const child = spawn(
  'node', ['-e', 'setInterval(() => console.log("tick"), 1000)'],
  { windows_hide: true },
  (err, chunk) => process.stdout.write(chunk),  // onStdout
  (err, chunk) => process.stderr.write(chunk),  // onStderr
  (err, code) => console.log('exited with', code) // onExit
);
// later: child.kill();

killProcess(pid) → void

Kill a process tree by PID. Uses taskkill /F /T on Windows, kill -TERM on Unix.

Options

| Option | Type | Description | |--------|------|-------------| | cwd | string? | Working directory | | env | string[]? | Environment variables (KEY=VALUE). Clears inherited env. | | windows_hide | boolean? | (Windows only) CREATE_NO_WINDOW flag — no console window pops up | | shell | boolean? | Run via shell (cmd.exe or /bin/sh) |

License

MIT