ruby-spawn

A cross-platform function for spawning Ruby processes.

How It Works

Systems that use rvm or rbenv have special needs for running Ruby. The process needs to be spawned in an appropriate shell (usually bash or zsh), and the shell needs to perform its own directory change (setting cwd in the process options is not enough). rubySpawn automates the steps required to execute the process. The return value is a standard ChildProcess, so rubySpawn is (mostly) a drop-in replacement for child_process.spawn. It works on Linux, MacOS, and Windows.

Usage

Import the function:

// JavaScript
const rubySpawn = require('ruby-spawn');

// TypeScript
import { rubySpawn } from 'ruby-spawn';

The function definition:

rubySpawn(command, arguments = [], options = {}, forceKill = false);

Arguments:

• command: (string) The command to be executed. Can be a system command or any executable file.
• arguments: (string[]) An array of arguments passed to the command.
• options: (object) See child_process.spawn for more information.
• forceKill: (boolean) If true, kill orphaned processes when the parent process exits.

Examples:

// Run a script in the current directory
rubySpawn('ruby', ['./script.rb'])

// Run a script in a different directory
rubySpawn('ruby', ['./script.rb'], { cwd: '/path/to/directory' });

// Run Bundler in a different directory
rubySpawn('bundle', ['install'], { cwd: '/path/to/directory' });

// Run RSpec in a different directory
rubySpawn('rspec', ['/path/to/directory'], { cwd: '/path/to/directory' });

Force Killing Processes

If you need to kill processes programmatically, you might need to set the optional forceKill option:

let child = rubySpawn('ruby', ['file.rb'], { cwd: '/path/to/dir' }, true);

Then, when you call child.kill(), ruby-spawn will kill processes that it identifies as orphans of child.