Grunt/NodeJs - Call ant command as a spawn process on windows environment

Question

In a grunt build process on a windows environment I'd like to call two ant command as spawn processes to be able to track output.

It goes like follow :

    grunt.registerTask('app-clean', 'Cleaning tasks', function() {
        var done = this.async();

        if (context.device.platform === 'android' || context.device.platform === 'all') {
            spawnProcess('ant', ['clean'], {
                cwd: path.resolve(context.android)
            }, done);
        }
    });

    grunt.registerTask('app-build', 'Building tasks', function() {
        var done = this.async();

        if (context.device.platform === 'android' || context.device.platform === 'all') {
            spawnProcess('ant', ['release'], {
                cwd: path.resolve(context.android)
            }, done);
        }
    });

    // Helper function to execute and log out child process
    // TODO: implement a better success/error callback
    var spawnProcess = function(command, args, options, callback) {
        var process = spawn(command, args, options),
            err = false;

        process.stdout.on('data', function(data) {
            grunt.log.write(data);
        });

        process.stderr.on('data', function(data) {
            err = true;
            grunt.log.errorlns(data);
        });

        if (typeof callback === 'function') {
            process.on('exit', function() {
                if (!err) {
                    return callback();
                }
            });
        }
    };

The grunt build using those tasks is then triggered by comand line step in Team City.

Both commands return a Fatal error: spawn ENOENT.

Answer 1

I use the following grunt script to do shell commands and kick off an ant process as well.

https://github.com/sindresorhus/grunt-shell

Answer 2

Simply replacing the spawn process by an exec one fixed it, but both other answers also work.

var execProcess = function(command, options, callback) {
        var process = exec(command, options),
            err = false;

        process.stdout.on('data', function(data) {
            grunt.log.write(data);
        });

        process.stderr.on('data', function(data) {
            err = true;
            grunt.log.errorlns(data);
        });

        if (typeof callback === 'function') {
            process.on('exit', function() {
                if (!err) {
                    return callback();
                }
            });
        }
};

execProcess('ant release', { cwd: path.resolve(context.android) }, done);

Note that the exec process take one less argument.

Answer 3

Windows requires a file extension for commands, such as .cmd, .exe, .bat appended to the command. I think ant supplies an ant.cmd in which case you would do:

var antCmd = process.platform === 'win32' ? 'ant.cmd' : 'ant';

To make it cross platform.