stderr

Flash an OS notification when a process writes to stderr

Install

npm install stderr --save

or

npm install stderr -g

Usage

stderr exports one, single function. Require it and pass in a command, an array of arguments, and (optional) options.

var stderr = require('stderr')
stderr('ls', ['-la'])

This is the same API (and options) as child_process.spawn. All options other than stdio will be passed through.

CLI

The cli is made to be as simple as possible. Simply prefix your command with stderr like so:

stderr ls -la

About

stderr will display a notification when a process:

1. Writes to stderr
2. Throws an error

All standard streams are left untouched by stderr. Standard input, output, and error streams should be exactly as they are with the non-prefixed version of the command. That means all piping, redirection, and bash craziness you'd like to get get into should just work.

If you are on a system without notifications (like a server environment) they will simply fail silently, and your program will continue to read and write as usual, there just won't be any notifications.

stderr uses the excellent node-notifier module so be sure to read up on what platforms are supported.

Why

Say Tom is using something like watchify to monitor his JavaScript files and create a new bundle every time a file is updated. At some point while Tom is writing his JavaScript he misses a closing bracket. He keeps refreshing his web browser, wondering what is wrong with his JavaScript and why the bundle isn't updating. He then kicks himself for not realizing it before and switches over to his terminal finding a helpful error message awaiting him.

With stderr, Tom just prepends the word stderr to his watchify command and now his computer magically notifies him that he stupidly missed a closing bracket. This saves him time and needless refreshing.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution guidelines.

License

ISC