nbb intercepts some cli args and sends them to node and to the program

[kanaka]

version

1.3.195

platform

Ubuntu 22.04 and node v20.11.1

problem

nbb is passing some command line arguments to node before also passing them to the program itself. This is probably a misbehavior but if it's intentional, then there should be a way to avoid this using the "--" separator.

repro

$ cat args.cljs
(prn :args *command-line-args*)
$ ./node_modules/.bin/nbb args.cljs  --arg1 val1 a b c
:args ("--arg1" "val1" "a" "b" "c")
$ ./node_modules/.bin/nbb args.cljs --env-file .env --arg1 val1 a b c
node: .env: not found
$ ./node_modules/.bin/nbb args.cljs -- --env-file .env --arg1 val1 a b c
node: .env: not found
$ touch .env
$ ./node_modules/.bin/nbb args.cljs --env-file .env --arg1 val1 a b c
:args ("--env-file" ".env" "--arg1" "val1" "a" "b" "c")

expected behavior

The --env-file option should only apply to the program and not be passed to node. Or, if that's intended, then at least the "--" separator should stop that behavior.

[borkdude]

@kanaka I think this is a bug in Node.js itself. Given this script:

scratch.mjs:

console.log(process.argv);

and when I call it with:

node scratch.mjs --env-file .env

I see:

$ node scratch.mjs --env-file .env
node: .env: not found

[borkdude]

Note that nbb doesn't call node, node calls nbb. So there's nothing I can do about this.

[borkdude]

This seems to be fixed in a later version of Node. I tested with 22.9.0 and there it works.

[kanaka]

Yeah, I had just discovered the same thing. Thanks for the quick followup.