Guides to Creating Cross-Platform Node.js Scripts
Node.js allows defining scripts in package.json. This feature often constitutes a major component of a developer’s workflow. For example, developers can define procedures such as building, testing, and deployment as scripts in package.json. If the project is intended to be cross-platform, the scripts should also be cross-platform.
In this post, we discuss guidelines and tips on how to create Node.js scripts that work on both Windows and POSIX systems (e.g., GNU/Linux, MacOS). The central tenet is using cross-platform Node.js features instead of POSIX/Windows-specific commands.
POSIX/Windows-specific commands include cp and sed on a POSIX system, or copy and md on Windows. We should avoid using them directly. Instead, there are Node.js packages that provide command-line interface (CLI) utilities that perform what these system-level commands do. The table below contains an incomplete list of common POSIX/Windows commands and npm packages that perform similar tasks. All packages listed in the Node.js column are popularly used.
For example, let’s say we have a project that requires copying a file to the dist/ directory in the build step. Instead of using cp or copy in package.json like:
