clean-run

Run a Node.js script in a clean environment without caring about the dependencies. This is a deno run alternative that works for Node.js.

Requires Node.js >= 14.14.0.

Motivation

When running a CI script, it is likely that we don't need all dependencies defined in a package.json. It might take relatively long time and high bandwidth to install all of them, especially when there are Electron and its friends. In areas with low bandwidth or poor network connections this may be a bigger problem as installation may fail and we have to care about packages that we don't even need.

If you are familiar with Deno, you will miss the feature to run a script with all the dependencies from remote. With clean-run you can easily run a script like that in Node.js.

How does this work?

clean-run scans the entry script file to see what packages it really depends on and only install those needed. We don't have to set mirrors and wait for large packages that are not even required.

Usage

Usage:

$ clean-run [options] <entryFile> [other arguments ...]

  <entryFile>   path to the main script, set to - if piped from stdin

Options:

  -s            suppress npm logs

You will need to install this one dependency first.

$ npm install clean-run
$ clean-run my-script.js

Or you can use npx to get a one-liner:

$ npx clean-run -s my-script.js

You can even run a remote script directly (try it by yourself 👇🏻):

$ curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gera2ld/clean-run/master/demos/cowsay.js | npx clean-run -s -