Known Issues

Output gets truncated

This is a known issue with console.log() (see nodejs/node#6379). It’s caused by different behaviour of console.log() writing to the terminal vs to a file. If a process calls process.exit(), buffered output will be truncated. To prevent this, the process should use process.exitCode = 1 and wait for the process to exit itself. Or use something like exit package.

Workaround is to write to a temp file:

const tmp = await $`mktemp` // Creates a temp file.
const {stdout} = await $`cmd > ${tmp}; cat ${tmp}`

Colors in subprocess

You may see what tools invoked with await $ don’t show colors, compared to what you see in a terminal. This is because, the subprocess does not think it’s a TTY and the subprocess turns off colors. Usually there is a way force the subprocess to add colors.

process.env.FORCE_COLOR='1'
await $`cmd`