Use shebang if installing locally?

[Taytay]

I just discovered that shebang support wasn't working on my build machine because I have installed ts-node locally, and then was running the .ts file with a shebang like: #!/usr/bin/env ts-node as referenced in #73

That works if you have ts-node installed globally, or if you have it installed locally, and have ./node_modules/.bin on your path, but if you don't have node_modules/.bin on your path, it doesn't appear to work, and this makes sense. My current workaround would be to rely upon npx and use the shebang #!npx ts-node, since npx is installed with ts-node. I just wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything since #73 claims that the /usr/bin/env shebang should "just work".

[blakeembrey]

You’re right, it definitely needs to be global and in your path (just like any other globally installed node.js module). I personally wouldn’t recommend it as a feature, but that issue asks if it’s possible and it certainly is - using npx or just running the script directly from ts-node would make it more resilient, possible to use local versions from package.json and better support cross platform.

[samuela]

I also really need this!

[samuela]

Using #!npx ts-node doesn't work for me:

-bash: ./yarn-run-all.ts: npx: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

[gabemeola]

@samuela Pointing to the env file worked for me

#!/usr/bin/env npx ts-node

[b1zzu]

@samuela Pointing to the env file worked for me

#!/usr/bin/env npx ts-node

This is not working for me:

/usr/bin/env: ‘npx ts-node’: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/env: use -[v]S to pass options in shebang lines

I've fixed it in this way:

#!/usr/bin/env -S npx ts-node

[matheo]

Sadly npx ts-node didn't work on a colleage's MacOs out of the box
so I compiled the typescript files to js but they doesn't detect the local dependencies with #!/usr/bin/env node

I hope that #!/usr/bin/env npx works on Mac as it does on my Linux :)

[bradymholt]

I have been searching for a way to use a shebang with locally installed ts-node but also in a portable way, so that it works on macOS and Linux. Since you can't pass multiple args in a shebang on Linux, using !/usr/bin/env npx ts-node does not work.

After messing around a bit, I came up with an ugly way to do this but it works and is a one-liner:

#!/usr/bin/perl -e$_=$ARGV[0];exec("/usr/bin/env\x20npx\x20ts-node\x20-s\x20@ARGV")

So, if you have a script called foo.ts that looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -e$_=$ARGV[0];exec("/usr/bin/env\x20npx\x20ts-node\x20-s\x20@ARGV")

const foo: string = `Hello ts-node: ${process.argv.splice(2).join(", ")}`;
console.log(foo);

You can use it like this:

chmod +x ./foo.ts;
./foo.ts --foo --boo
> Hello ts-node: --foo, --boo

Benefits:

• Works on macOS and Linux
• Will use local or globally installed ts-node or install it on the fly with npx if missing (no need to globally install ts-node)
• Does not use a relative shebang path so cwd does not matter

[ThePlenkov]

#!/usr/bin/env ts-node-script works for me on Windows

[kyr0]

The way it actually works on all platforms is to use plain node/JS with a standard shebang for node (this executable is always globally available), run execSync from child_process, and do npm run start:ts -- in your package.json put a script called "start:ts" like that:

{
    scripts: {
        "start:ts": "ts-node yourCommand.ts"
    }
} 

Point is, that npm will take care for the lookup then internally with node-resolve algo and this also works on any platform and of course also with npx -- which gives you headaches because npx would install in different directory stuctures because of caching

[cspotcode]

#!/usr/bin/env ts-node-script works for me on Windows

FYI ts-node does ts-node-script behavior by default now, so assuming you're running a recent version of ts-node, you can use ts-node in your shebangs.

---

Globally-installed ts-node is smart enough to use locally-installed versions of typescript and @types/node, so generally you can install the most recent version of ts-node globally and then use ts-node in your shebangs. It will still respect your local typescript version and local tsconfig.

Here is an example of a project configured to be installed and run via npx: https://github.com/cspotcode/code-workspace-launcher/ It might require a globally-installed ts-node, I'm not sure; I haven't tested that in a while.

---

The way it actually works on all platforms is to use plain node/JS with a standard shebang for node (this executable is always globally available), run execSync from child_process, and do npm run start:ts -- in your package.json put a script called "start:ts" like that

You can avoid the overhead of npm by spawning ts-node directly if you can get the path to ./node_modules/.bin/ts-node or ./node_modules/ts-node/dist/bin.js

Even better, you can avoid the overhead of child_process by using our API.

#!/usr/bin/env node
require('ts-node').register({
  projectSearchDir: __dirname // tell ts-node where to find our local tsconfig.json and local typescript version
});
require('./my-bin-script.ts'); // now that ts-node has been installed, our code will compile

https://typestrong.org/ts-node/api/index.html#register
https://typestrong.org/ts-node/api/interfaces/RegisterOptions.html#projectSearchDir