Issue with windows

[ForbesLindesay]

In the component script:

// local

var local = join(__dirname, bin);
if (exists(local)) bin = local;

Means we use the full path to the command, rather than just component-command we use C:\\Users\\Forbes\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm\\node_modules\\component\\bin\\component-command which doesn't work on windows. I'm not sure if this is needed elsewhere? It breaks component command and forces you to use component-command. A quick fix would be to instead do:

if (require('os').type() != 'Windows_NT') {
  var local = join(__dirname, bin);
  if (exists(local)) bin = local;
}

but I understand we don't want too much OS specific stuff slipping in... Thoughts @visionmedia?

[tj]

hmm we must be able to exec a specific file on windows, without this you cant use component(1) unless globally installed

[ForbesLindesay]

Hmm, true npm run-script does it somehow. I wonder how that works... At the moment it seems like it's tolerant of the fact that it's not an exe file or batch file, provided it's referenced as component-install but not if it's referenced with a full file path.

One option would be to just load them using require('./component-' + command) instead, that would be completely cross platform.

[tj]

loading them with require() isnt the same as invoking them with proper args etc

[TooTallNate]

The problem is that component-command is really component-commant.bat on Windows, which is not directly executable, but instead must be executed as the argument to cmd.exe. The upstream tracking issue is nodejs/node-v0.x-archive#2318.

[tj]

going to close but only because component shouldn't even have to worry about this

[ForbesLindesay]

tbh I think it's not too big a deal if for now we make sure that all our docs take the form component-command then users will never run into it. I agree that ideally we would like to be able to ignore these issues, but we need good uptake of the tools, which means we can't really afford to lose all potential windows users.

[tj]

we could always use work-arounds for now like your win-spawn module, that sort of idea, that we can weed out once node core is not a mess