4 ms·

NPM package is-windows is a one line function but used by 2.5M repos

• tannhaeuser 7y ago
  It's laughable, but actually I've been in the exact situation to prevent a published app from running on Windows, because the app makes specific assumptions wrt shared read/write file access and locking semantics, composing file names, and spawning shell scripts as child processes. So I guess widepread use of is-windows comes from wanting a commonly understood pattern to block running on Windows, not having tested your app on Windows, etc. What's best practice to follow here?
  • krapp 7y ago
    The best practice is (or should be) to develop separate, optimized apps for each system you want to target, and to not build or offer a Windows version if you don't want to support Windows. OR, since this is just an expression in a single line function, just write it yourself and don't include it as a dependency.
    • tannhaeuser 7y ago
      Yes but how to tell npm your app doesn't run on Windows? Checking for win32 or other well-known Win-specific "process" property in your "build" npm script, and make it fail if it hasn't any of the expected valued? I'm guessing is-windows is idiomatically used for this exact purpose, and people not wanting to hard-code a heuristic for detecting Windows in their app. But then, I'm not sure third-party packages are available during execution of "build". The last time I had to deal with this, it didn't work out as I intended, and I ran out of time to find a robust, generally used idiom for this.