Gathering detailed insights and metrics for cross-spawn
Gathering detailed insights and metrics for cross-spawn
A cross platform solution to node's spawn and spawnSync
Installations
npm install cross-spawnDeveloper Guide
BETA
Typescript
No
Module System
CommonJS
Min. Node Version
>= 8
Node Version
20.13.1
NPM Version
10.5.2
Score
97.9
Supply Chain
96.5
Quality
79
Maintenance
100
Vulnerability
100
License
Releases
Unable to fetch releases
Languages
1
JavaScript
JavaScript (100%)
Developer
moxystudio
Download Statistics
Total Downloads
18,002,033,142
Last Day
6,011,133
Last Week
94,916,029
Last Month
410,907,920
Last Year
4,113,910,296
GitHub Statistics
MIT License
1,144 Stars
229 Commits
128 Forks
24 Watchers
2 Branches
20 Contributors
Updated on Jul 04, 2025
Bundle Size
6.43 kB
Minified
2.60 kB
Minified + Gzipped
Maintainers
1
Package Meta Information
Latest Version
7.0.6
Package Id
cross-spawn@7.0.6
Unpacked Size
15.72 kB
Size
6.11 kB
File Count
9
NPM Version
10.5.2
Node Version
20.13.1
Published on
Nov 18, 2024
Total Downloads
Cumulative downloads
Total Downloads
18,002,033,142
Last Day
-8%
6,011,133
Compared to previous day
Last Week
-7.6%
94,916,029
Compared to previous week
Last Month
2.1%
410,907,920
Compared to previous month
Last Year
20.2%
4,113,910,296
Compared to previous year
Weekly Downloads
Monthly Downloads
Yearly Downloads
cross-spawn
A cross platform solution to node's spawn and spawnSync.
Installation
Node.js version 8 and up:
$ npm install cross-spawn
Node.js version 7 and under:
$ npm install cross-spawn@6
Why
Node has issues when using spawn on Windows:
- It ignores PATHEXT
- It does not support shebangs
- Has problems running commands with spaces
- Has problems running commands with posix relative paths (e.g.:
./my-folder/my-executable) - Has an issue with command shims (files in
node_modules/.bin/), where arguments with quotes and parenthesis would result in invalid syntax error - No
options.shellsupport on node<v4.8
All these issues are handled correctly by cross-spawn.
There are some known modules, such as win-spawn, that try to solve this but they are either broken or provide faulty escaping of shell arguments.
Usage
Exactly the same way as node's spawn or spawnSync, so it's a drop in replacement.
1const spawn = require('cross-spawn'); 2 3// Spawn NPM asynchronously 4const child = spawn('npm', ['list', '-g', '-depth', '0'], { stdio: 'inherit' }); 5 6// Spawn NPM synchronously 7const result = spawn.sync('npm', ['list', '-g', '-depth', '0'], { stdio: 'inherit' });
Caveats
Using options.shell as an alternative to cross-spawn
Starting from node v4.8, spawn has a shell option that allows you run commands from within a shell. This new option solves
the PATHEXT issue but:
- It's not supported in node
<v4.8 - You must manually escape the command and arguments which is very error prone, specially when passing user input
- There are a lot of other unresolved issues from the Why section that you must take into account
If you are using the shell option to spawn a command in a cross platform way, consider using cross-spawn instead. You have been warned.
options.shell support
While cross-spawn adds support for options.shell in node <v4.8, all of its enhancements are disabled.
This mimics the Node.js behavior. More specifically, the command and its arguments will not be automatically escaped nor shebang support will be offered. This is by design because if you are using options.shell you are probably targeting a specific platform anyway and you don't want things to get into your way.
Shebangs support
While cross-spawn handles shebangs on Windows, its support is limited. More specifically, it just supports #!/usr/bin/env <program> where <program> must not contain any arguments.
If you would like to have the shebang support improved, feel free to contribute via a pull-request.
Remember to always test your code on Windows!
Tests
$ npm test
$ npm test -- --watch during development
License
Released under the MIT License.
High
7.5/10
Summary
Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in cross-spawn
Affected Versions
< 6.0.6
Patched Versions
6.0.6
High
7.5/10
Summary
Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS) in cross-spawn
Affected Versions
>= 7.0.0, < 7.0.5
Patched Versions
7.0.5
Reason
no binaries found in the repo
Reason
no dangerous workflow patterns detected
Reason
license file detected
Details
- Info: project has a license file: LICENSE:0
- Info: FSF or OSI recognized license: MIT License: LICENSE:0
Reason
dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 3
Details
- Warn: GitHub-owned GitHubAction not pinned by hash: .github/workflows/ci.yaml:14: update your workflow using https://app.stepsecurity.io/secureworkflow/moxystudio/node-cross-spawn/ci.yaml/master?enable=pin
- Warn: GitHub-owned GitHubAction not pinned by hash: .github/workflows/ci.yaml:16: update your workflow using https://app.stepsecurity.io/secureworkflow/moxystudio/node-cross-spawn/ci.yaml/master?enable=pin
- Info: 0 out of 2 GitHub-owned GitHubAction dependencies pinned
- Info: 1 out of 1 npmCommand dependencies pinned
Reason
Found 8/29 approved changesets -- score normalized to 2
Reason
0 commit(s) and 0 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 0
Reason
detected GitHub workflow tokens with excessive permissions
Details
- Warn: no topLevel permission defined: .github/workflows/ci.yaml:1
- Info: no jobLevel write permissions found
Reason
no effort to earn an OpenSSF best practices badge detected
Reason
security policy file not detected
Details
- Warn: no security policy file detected
- Warn: no security file to analyze
- Warn: no security file to analyze
- Warn: no security file to analyze
Reason
project is not fuzzed
Details
- Warn: no fuzzer integrations found
Reason
branch protection not enabled on development/release branches
Details
- Warn: branch protection not enabled for branch 'master'
Reason
SAST tool is not run on all commits -- score normalized to 0
Details
- Warn: 0 commits out of 10 are checked with a SAST tool
Reason
46 existing vulnerabilities detected
Details
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-968p-4wvh-cqc8
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-67hx-6x53-jw92
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-6chw-6frg-f759
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-v88g-cgmw-v5xw
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-93q8-gq69-wqmw
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-v6h2-p8h4-qcjw
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-grv7-fg5c-xmjg
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-w8qv-6jwh-64r5
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-3xgq-45jj-v275
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-gxpj-cx7g-858c
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-w573-4hg7-7wgq
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-ff7x-qrg7-qggm
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-8r6j-v8pm-fqw3
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: MAL-2023-462
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-ww39-953v-wcq6
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-43f8-2h32-f4cj
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-qqgx-2p2h-9c37
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-896r-f27r-55mw
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-9c47-m6qq-7p4h
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-p6mc-m468-83gw
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-29mw-wpgm-hmr9
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-35jh-r3h4-6jhm
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-952p-6rrq-rcjv
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-f8q6-p94x-37v3
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-vh95-rmgr-6w4m
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-xvch-5gv4-984h
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-5fw9-fq32-wv5p
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-hj48-42vr-x3v9
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-hrpp-h998-j3pp
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-p8p7-x288-28g6
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-c2qf-rxjj-qqgw
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-3jfq-g458-7qm9
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-r628-mhmh-qjhw
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-9r2w-394v-53qc
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-5955-9wpr-37jh
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-qq89-hq3f-393p
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-f5x3-32g6-xq36
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-jgrx-mgxx-jf9v
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-72xf-g2v4-qvf3
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-7p7h-4mm5-852v
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-38fc-wpqx-33j7
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-j8xg-fqg3-53r7
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-6fc8-4gx4-v693
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-3h5v-q93c-6h6q
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-c4w7-xm78-47vh
- Warn: Project is vulnerable to: GHSA-p9pc-299p-vxgp
Score
2.9
/10
Last Scanned on 2025-06-30
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